THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


J  I  M 


OTHER   BOOKS   BY 

REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

THE  GIRL  THAT  GOES  WRONG 

IN  A  MOMENT  OF  TIME 

WHAT  IS  SOCIALISM? 

THE  SPIDER'S  WEB 


JIM 


By 

REGINALD   WRIGHT   KAUFFMAN 

AUTHOR    OF    "THE    HOUSE    OF    BONDAGE,"   ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT.  1915,  BY 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


All  Rights  Reserved 

Published,  May  1915 
Second  Printing,  June  1915 


TO 
LOUIS  HOW 


2136542   ' 


NOTE 

ON  November  28th  last,  while  this  book  was  in 
the  making,  there  was  printed  in  the  Philadelphia 
Evening  Ledger  a  paragraph  saying  that  "  several 
well-known  radicals  appear  in  '  Jim.' '  That  state 
ment  is  absolutely  mistaken :  not  only  are  my  so- 
called  radicals  creatures  of  my  imagination,  but 
there  is  no  person,  radical  or  other,  in  this  novel 
who,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  any  prototype  in  real  life. 

I  do  believe  that  our  divorce-courts  are  hood 
winked  by  many  of  the  parties  that  appeal  to  them. 
I  do  believe  that  some  "  radicals  "  make  their  creed 
ridiculous  by  buffoonery,  and  that  others  basely  use 
their  radicalism  as  an  excuse  for  moral  laziness, 
even  moral  turpitude.  But  I  had  no  particular  di 
vorced  persons  in  mind  when  I  wrote  of  Charley 
Vanaman  and  the  woman  he  married — no  particular 
radicals  in  mind  when  I  attempted  to  depict  certain 
faults  and  foibles  in  the  people  with  whom  Vanaman 
and  his  wife  came  into  contact. 

General  types  and  modern  tendencies  I  have  of 
course  tried  to  portray;  and  I  have  tried,  as  every 
honest  writer  of  fiction  must,  to  make  my  people 
seem  alive  as  they  move  across  the  printed  page. 
Nevertheless,  the  people  as  individuals — the  wife, 
her  lovers,  relatives,  friends,  acquaintances  and 
enemies — are  not  intended  to  be,  and  are  not,  por 
traits  of  any  living  individuals;  their  characters  are 
their  own  only,  and  for  their  deeds,  both  good  and 
ill,  no  person  in  real  life  may  truly  be  held  ac 
countable.  R.  W.  K. 

NEW  YORK  CITY, 
2 4th  March,  1915. 


JIM 

FIRST  CHAPTER 

THE  faint  breeze  of  an  evening  in  May  stirred 
the  curtains  of  the  darkened  room.  The  scent 
of  the  season  saturated  the  air ;  it  climbed  from 
the  treetops  in  nearby  Central  Park  and  floated  over 
the  window-sill.    Spring,  the  oldest,  the  sweetest,  and 
the  subtlest  of  liars,  was  at  the  ear  of  the  world  once 
more,  and  in  the  ear  of  the  world  was  whispering: 

'  You  are  still  young,  and  I  have  made  you 
younger.  You  can  do  it  all  over  again.  You  can 
begin  afresh.  Do  it  all  over;  begin  afresh — now!  " 

The  woman  in  the  twilight  at  the  apartment-house 
window  listened  to  that  whisper  and  believed  it,  as 
she  had  been  listening  to  it  and  believing  it  ever  since, 
long  weeks  before,  the  first  vernal  hint  of  approach 
ing  warmth,  creeping  northward  from  Carolinian 
valleys  and  up  the  Pennsylvanian  waterways,  sought 
a  timid  foothold  in  the  New  York  streets.  She  had 
listened  and  planned  and  acted;  and  now,  it  seemed, 
the  moment  was  arrived  to  call  Spring  to  his  ac 
counting. 

Leaning  far  out  of  the  window,  a  shadow  bend 
ing  from  the  shadows  of  her  own  house  toward  the 
shadows  of  the  street,  Mrs.  Trent  assured  herself 
that  she  was  indeed  still  young,  that  she  was  really 
much  younger  than  her  thirty-one  years  would  have 
permitted  another  woman  to  be.  And,  upon  this  in- 


2  JIM 

stance,  she  did  what  few  young  people  do,  and 
what  Edith  Trent  had,  up  to  that  time,  scarcely 
ever  done:  she  allowed  her  thoughts  to  desert  the 
present  and  the  future,  and  gave  them  rein  to  run, 
albeit  with  a  gentle  regard  for  her  own  sensibilities, 
over  the  arid  track  of  her  past. 

She  could  justify  that  past,  and  she  did  justify  it. 
If,  at  two-and-twenty,  she  had  known  more  of  the 
world  than  the  twenty-year-old  lad  whom  she  then 
married,  the  fault  surely  lay  with  Jim,  who,  at 
twenty,  should  have  had  a  working-knowledge  of 
life.  If  she  had  tricked  him  into  that  marriage,  he 
was  at  least  willing  enough  to  marry  her.  If  the 
trick,  the  lie  that  she  had  told  him,  was  soon  in 
evitably  discovered,  so  did  she  soon  discover 
that  Jim's  hopes  of  a  substantial  inheritance  from 
his  aunt  were  equally  ill-founded.  She  doubted 
the  sincerity  of  those  hopes  of  his;  he  ought  to 
have  verified  them.  Edith  hated  failure;  she  was 
sure  that,  in  spite  of  her  deceptions,  she  had  loved 
and  trusted  the  spirited  boy;  she  was  precisely 
as  sure  that  love  and  trust  could  not  reasonably 
be  expected  to  survive  when  the  spirited  boy  changed 
into  a  struggling  painter;  when,  without  any  ap 
parent  hope  of  success  in  it,  he  gave  quite  half  of 
his  affections  to  an  art  that  his  wife  did  not  care  to 
understand. 

Her  married  life  had  been,  she  now  assured  her 
self,  an  exceedingly  dull  combat  against  impossible 
odds,  and,  though  that  dullness  was  occasionally  re 
lieved  by  quiet  essays  beyond  the  sphere  of  ideal 
domesticity  that  she  had  chosen,  Edith  felt  satisfied 
— because  she  wanted  to  feel  satisfied — that  Jim 


JIM  3 

had  sought  and  found  variety.  At  this  period 
of  her  life  she  possessed  the  blessed  quality  of  for 
getting  whatever  she  chose  to  forget,  but  she  could 
recall  George  Mertcheson  and  Tommy  Kirkpatrick 
and  Billy  Namyna  with  admirable  equanimity.  The 
only  things  that  might  disturb  her  were  a  few  brief 
letters:  one  merely  incautious  letter  that  she  knew 
Jim  somewhere  preserved — though  she  had  ran 
sacked  all  his  belongings  and  could  not  find  it — and 
two  or  three  others,  which  she  had  reason  to  believe 
he  had  secured  and  somewhere  still  possessed. 
But  now 

§  2.  There  came  at  the  door  of  her  darkened 
room :  the  knock  for  which  she  had  been  waiting. 

Edith  turned:  the  movement  was  stealthy,  but 
more  quick  than  stealthy.  Impatient  as  she  had 
been  for  this  summons,  its  arrival  startled  her. 

"  Come  in,"  she  said.  Except  the  guest,  there 
was  none  within  earshot,  yet  she  kept  her  voice  low. 

The  door  opened.  The  shadow  that  entered  the 
room  entered  irresolutely. 

"  Edith?  "  Its  tone  was  the  echo  of  hers. 

"  Yes.  You're  late,  Charley."  There  was  an 
noyance  at  his  tardiness.  "  Where  on  earth  have 
you  been?  " 

Nevertheless,  the  two  shadowy  figures  were  em 
bracing. 

"  My  father  wasn't  so  well.  He  kept  me.  You've 
got  it  awful  dark  here,  Edith." 

She  rested  her  head  on  his  shoulder  with  a  spon 
taneity  that  was  the  drawing  of  a  curtain  upon  all 
memory  of  like  surrenders  to  other  shoulders. 


4  JIM 

"I  know.  I've  been  thinking,"  she  explained; 
"  and  I  can't  think  when  the  light's  on." 

"  Where— where's  Jim?" 

The  name  splashed  into  the  twilight.  Edith 
drew  away;  she  returned  to  her  place  at  the  window. 

"  Sit  down  here,"  she  said,  and  indicated  a  chair 
beside  her  own.  "  He's  gone  out." 

Charley  sat  down.  He  had  the  manner  of  a  man 
for  whom  the  prevailing  twilight  was  as  much  mental 
as  physical.  He  said: 

"Why?" 

"  Because  I  told  him  to,"  said  Edith. 

"And  he  went?" 

"  Of  course.  He  always  does  what  I  tell  him 
to :  that's  one  of  his  ways  of  making  me  hate  him. 
I  told  him  I  wanted  a  private  talk  with  you." 

She  knew  that  she  was  young,  and  she  had  always 
been  determined.  The  worst  was  over:  she  had 
faced  Jim  and  forced,  as  she  had  so  often  forced, 
her  will  on  him.  Once,  long  ago,  she  had  told  him 
that  she  would  have  respected  him  had  he  ever 
beaten  her;  now  she  was  the  more  bitter  because  of 
what  she  considered  the  weakness  of  his  compliance 
in  promising  to  grant  her  demand  for  liberty.  He 
had  always  refused  to  fight  her:  he  would  not  fight 
her  now.  He  would  not  produce  the  one  letter; 
his  silence  regarding  the  others  indicated  that  he 
would  not  produce  them.  He  would  not  produce 
anything.  As  always,  he  was  to  give  her  her  way: 
her  acquaintance  with  those  other  men,  even  the  cir 
cumstances  of  her  marriage  to  Jim,  need  never  come 
out  in  court,  need  never  be  confessed  to  Charley 
Vanaman.  She  was  not  grateful  to  her  husband,  but 


JIM  5 

she  paid  her  thanks  to  the  great  god  Luck  for  the 
opportunity  to  bury  all  these  things  before  the  door 
of  the  high  last  love  that  the  great  god  Luck  had 
sent  her. 

For  Charley,  the  purely  mental  portion  of  the 
twilight  was  joyously  lessened  by  her  last  statement. 
Revolving  it  in  a  mind  that  was  generally  steady,  but 
seldom  alert,  he  chuckled.  His  chuckles  were  an 
inherent  part  of  his  conversation,  and  this  one  was 
compact  of  admiration  and  surprise. 

'  You  certainly  don't  mind  telling  Jim  what  you 
want,"  he  said. 

"  It's  the  only  way  to  deal  with  him :  tell  him 
what  you  want,  but  not  what  you  want  it  for.  You 
know  how  easy  he  is."  She  so  despised  her  husband 
that  she  could  not  speak  pleasantly  of  him,  even  to 
his  successful  rival.  She  leaned  her  chin  on  her 
hand  and  her  elbow  on  the  sill  of  the  open  window. 
The  faint  Spring  breeze  cooled  her  burning  cheeks. 
"  I've  had  it  out  with  him  this  time,"  she  added. 

§  3.  There  it  was.  For  weeks  she  and  Charley 
had  approached  this  subject,  smelled  it,  quivered, 
circled,  advanced,  scampered  away,  like  mice  about 
a  bit  of  cheese  that  they  desire,  but  fear  may  bait  a 
hidden  trap ;  like  less  heroic  Caesars  at  the  Cisalpine 
river;  finally  like  hunters  on  whom  the  quarry  turns. 

When  they  talked  to  each  other,  this  was  always 
in  the  air.  It  was  always  in  their  minds.  Not  at 
first.  At  first,  on  that  red  night  when  they  had 
plunged  into  their  emotional  Rubicon,  they  thought 
of  nothing  save  the  delectable  country  on  its  other 
side.  Later,  they  found  they  could  return  to  the  bank 


6  JIM 

that  they  had  left,  and  the  fields  beyond  the  river 
were  only  a  pleasant  playground.  Yet  gradually 
they  cared  less  and  less  about  returning  to  that  nearer 
bank;  gradually  they  did  not  want  to  return  to  it; 
gradually  they  loathed  the  thought  of  returning. 
For  many  days  both  felt  the  loathing,  neither  men 
tioning  it  to  the  other,  but  each  knowing  what  the 
other  felt.  Then  a  look,  or  a  sob,  something  less 
than  a  word,  made  declaration.  They  shuddered  at 
the  necessity  of  these  returnings:  why  not  make  re 
turn  impossible? 

Or  the  figure  of  the  hunter :  The  thing,  upon  that 
declaration,  took  shape  in  speech.  It  was  now  a  hint, 
now  a  hope,  now  a  passionate  avowal.  Charley  was 
fearful  and  showed  it;  Edith  fearful,  but  determined. 
They  temporized,  because  at  heart  they  were  conven 
tional,  but  when  they  stood  still  in  their  pursuit,  that 
which  they  had  pursued  turned  and  attacked  them. 
They  had  to  have  it:  divorce. 

Then  the  frightful  question  of  means: 

"  Jim's  behaving  himself,"  Edith  had  said,  "  just 
to  keep  us  from  what  he  must  guess  we  want.  He  is. 
It's  exactly  like  him  to  do  that.  He's  a  devil.  That's 
his  way.  He's  always  given  me  all  of  the  little  money 
he  can  make — given  it  to  me  as  soon  as  it  comes  in — 
and  simply  because  he  wants  to  pretend  to  himself 
that  he's  generous  when  what  he's  really  after  is  not 
to  have  the  bother  of  paying  the  bills!  " 

Charley  hop'ed,  but  wondered.  Was  she  sure  that 
Jim  had  ever 

Of  course  she  was !  The  quietness  of  Jim's  char 
acter  was  proof  sufficient:  its  silent  surface  fairly 
babbled  of  depths. 


JIM  7 

"  Unfaithful!  "  Edith  had  said,  looking  past  her 
lover  to  the  imagined  figure  of  Jim.  "  That's  what 
Jim  is:  Models!  It  stands  to  reason  it's  so,  for 
ever  since  you  and  I  got  to  be  friendly  (he's  never 
mentioned  that  we  were,  of  course  .  .  .  his  way 
again!) — well,  ever  since  then  he's  not  slept  in 
our  bedroom:  he's  been  sleeping  alone  in  the 
next  room — in  the  studio.  You  see,  it  stands  to 
reason." 

They  had  no  fear  that  Jim  would  himself  sue  for 
a  divorce  and  make  a  scandal.  Time  was  when 
Charley  had  thought  tremblingly  of  such  a  mis 
chance,  but  Edith,  out  of  her  experience  of  her  hus 
band,  was  bountifully  reassuring.  Jim,  she  said, 
already  knew  it  and  had  long  known  it:  he  did  noth 
ing,  she  was  sure,  because  he  probably  concluded 
that  they,  reckless  of  notoriety,  wanted  him  to 
do  everything.  Jim — that  formed  her  chiefest 
complaint  against  him — was  not  a  man  to  do  any 
thing. 

There  then  remained,  they  thus  at  last  demon 
strated,  the  one  course  only.  Because  they  could 
not  find  what  they  were  convinced  existed,  they  must 
manufacture  its  counterfeit;  they  must  "make  a 
case,"  and,  since  they  were  convinced  that  the  reality 
did  indeed  somewhere  lie  hidden — since  they  argued 
the  punishment  deserved — this  did  not  at  once  strike 
them  as  unethical.  Surely  it  would  be  useless  to 
apply  to  Jim  to  furnish  them  with  real  evidence: 
"  he,"  said  Edith,  "  would  just  pretend  he  was  too 
chivalrous  to  give  a  woman  away."  Surely  again, 
it  would  be  useless  to  ask  him  to  supply  a  fictitious 
case :  "  he  loves  to  play  at  being  magnanimous,  but 


8  JIM 

this  would  only  give  him  a  chance  to  say  he  was  no 
liar."  Edith  would  go  boldly  to  him,  tell  him  that 
she  meant  to  free  herself  and  count  on  his  absurd 
pride  to  answer: 

"  Very  well,  if  you  want  to  be  free  of  me,  you 
must  take  the  sin  of  perjury  on  yourself,  but  I  won't 
interfere  to  rob  you  of  its  reward." 

She  had  told  Charley  that  she  would  do  this,  and 
he  hoped  that  she  would  successfully  do  it,  but  his 
was  not  the  sort  of  mind  to  previsage.  And  now, 
in  one  of  the  very  rooms  in  which  she  lived  with 
Jim,  here  she  was  saying  through  the  May  twilight 
that  the  thing  was  done : 

"  I've  had  it  out  with  him  this  time." 

§4.  Charley  took  a  deep  breath: 

"  You  don't  mean " 

'  Yes,  I  do.  I  told  him  that  I  wanted  a  divorce, 
that  I  wanted  him  to  let  me  get  a  divorce." 

Her  lover  half  rose: 

"Did  you  tell  him  why?" 

"  I  did.  That  was  one  case  where  I  had  to  give 
reasons.  I  said  I  didn't  love  him  and  wanted  to 
marry  somebody  else." 

"  Me?     Did  you  say  it  was  me?  " 

"  I  didn't  have  to.  You  know  he  understood  that. 
You  know  he  guessed  it  long  ago,  even  if  he  never 
spoke  of  it.  He'd  have  guessed  it  sooner  than  he 
did  if  he  wasn't  so  wrapped  up  in  those  pictures 
that  he'll  never  do  more  than  make  a  living  out  of 
them !  " 

"  But   if  he   has   guessed Charley's   voice 

broke.     "  Do  you  think  I'd  better  stay  here?  " 


JIM  9 

Edith  laughed.  "What  nonsense!  Doesn't  this 
show  I  can  manage  him?  Oh,  no;  he  thinks  he's  so 
intellectual  and  superior  that  he's  glad — actually 
glad — to  pose  as  a  philosopher.  He  wants  this 
thing,  because  he  wants  to  take  it  in  a  way  that  no 
body  else  would.  I  humored  him  in  that,  and  so 
must  you."  She  broke  off  sharply:  "I'm  ashamed 
to  have  been  married  to  such  a  man!  " 

Charley  was  silent  and  she  found  his  silence  provo 
cative. 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear,"  she  cried,  "  you  can't 
know  what  I've  had  to  put  up  with.  Not  even  you 
can  know.  He  can  make  his  meanness  look  like 
generosity,  so  as  to  make  his  meanness  meaner.  He 
can  make  his  cruelty  look  like  kindness,  so's  it'll  hurt 
more.  He  fools  everybody.  There's  Bishop  Peel. 
I  don't  go  to  church  much,  but  I've  heard  Bishop 
Peel  preach  and  he's  the  cleverest  preacher  I 
ever  did  hear,  but  Jim  could  come  close  to  fooling 
him." 

"At  my  club,"  began  Charley:  he  belonged  to 
but  one  club  and  was  very  proud  of  belonging, 
"  they  say " 

Edith,  however,  had  her  own  opinions. 

"  Just  think  of  that  portrait  he  painted  of  me," 
she  said.  "  He  only  did  it  to  hurt  my  feelings.  He 
actually  wanted  me  to  pose  in  the  old  dressing-gown 
I  wear  mornings,  and  when  I  wouldn't  he  painted  it 
in  anyhow — called  it  '  characteristic.'  And  the 
face — If  that's  art  I  I  know  his  friends  say  it  makes 
me  look  pretty,  but  they  paint  the  same  way  he  does. 
It  was  only  an  insult,  but  it  was  an  insult  after  years 
of  injury!  " 


io  JIM 

Charley  had  resumed  his  seat,  but  his  posture  was 
still  uncertain. 

"  Anyhow,"  he  said,  "  the  man  seems  to  me  to  be 
rather  decent  in  this." 

"  You  don't  know  him,"  she  retorted.  "  It's 
nothing  but  conceit." 

"  Then  its  lucky  for  us  he's  conceited,  Edith. 
How  much  did  you  tell  him?  " 

"All  I  had  to,  but  no  more." 

"  Does  he  know  for  sure ?  " 

"  He  pretends  he  thinks  it's  all  on  the  high  spirit 
ual  plane  that  he  puts  himself  on,  and  I  daresay 
he  half  believes  it  is." 

Charley  settled  more  comfortably  in  his  chair. 

"  He's  promised  not  to  contest?  " 

"  Yes,  he's  promised." 

"  Does  he  know  you'll  probably  bring  suit  in  this 
state?" 

"  I  suppose  so.    It  can't  make  any  difference." 

"  But  in  New  York  there's  only  one  ground." 

"  Oh,  he's  so  much  in  the  clouds,  he'll  never  re 
member  that." 

"  He'll  be  told  about  it,  as  soon  as  he  talks  to  his 
lawyer." 

"  He  won't  talk  to  his  lawyer.  He  said  he  would 
n't;  he's  too  proud  to  show  that  he  takes  any  interest. 
He  said  all  he'd  do  would  be  to  write  to  a  lawyer  to 
represent  him  formally,  not  interfere,  and  not  bother 
him  again  till  it  was  all  over.  He's  going  to  do 
exactly  what  we  want  him  to  do :  nothing." 

"  So  he  says."  Charley  was  still  doubtful.  "  But 
do  you  think  he'll  stick  to  it?  " 

"  I  know  I  can  make  him  stick  to  it." 


JIM  n 

Vanaman  sighed,  whether  from  relief  or  contin 
ued  doubt.  Certainly  he  had  a  distaste  that  Edith 
did  not  share. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  guess  it'll  be  all  right  then. 
We're  to  do  what  you — what  we  planned?  " 

She  nodded. 

"  I'm  to  give  the  evidence  you  told  me  to?"  he 
persisted. 

"  Yes.  And  you're  to  get  some  detective  or  other 
to  back  you  up." 

Charley  gulped  audibly. 

Her  face  was  still  turned  toward  the  scented  dark 
ness  of  the  street,  but  her  hand  sought  his. 

"  I  love  you,"  she  said,  quietly. 

His  hand  returned  her  pressure.  He  leaned  for 
ward  to  kiss  her,  but,  midway,  he  wavered  as  if 
some  force  from  without,  some  force  to  which  he 
was  not  yet  a  stranger,  restrained  him. 

"  It  does  seem  like  a  phony  trick,"  he  ventured. 

"  What  does?  "  Her  words  were  a  challenge,  but 
the  movement  that  preceded  them  was  made  as 
if  the  force  that  checked  Vanaman  pushed  her 
away. 

"  Why,  all  this — "  he  hung  over  the  descriptive 
word — "  frame-up." 

Edith  rose. 

"It's  not  a  frame-up;  it's  not  anything  of  the 
kind,"  she  said.  The  utterance  of  the  denial  helped 
her  first  to  anger  and  then  to  honest  conviction  as 
she  continued :  "  I've  told  you  it  was  the  truth — 
really.  I'm  perfectly  certain  he's  been  guilty  some 
time  or  other.  So  were  you,  Charley:  you  said  so 
yourself.  Only  we  can't  prove  it.  What's  the 


12  JIM 

difference  whether  he  was  guilty  last  year  or  last 
week?  I  believe  you  like  the  man!  " 

It  is  so  much  easier  to  lie  under  oath  than  to  lie 
in  ordinary  conversation.  Charley  contemplated 
perjury  with  increasing  calm;  but  here  was  a  seri 
ous  matter. 

"  I  don't  exactly  dislike  him,"  said  Vanaman.  He 
added,  with  sincerity:  "Except  for  what  he's  done 
to  you." 

But  his  first  words  had  completed  the  regrowth 
of  Edith's  momentarily  retarded  self-assurance. 
She  could  go  ahead  now.  She  must. 

"  Well,  he  thinks  you're  no  better  than  the  dirt 
under  his  feet.  I  can  tell  you  some  things  he's  said 
about  you,  and  I  will  when  we've  more  time.  He 
pretends  to  pity  you  so  as  to  have  an  excuse  to  laugh 
at  you.  He's  always  laughing  at  that  invention  of 
yours.  Only  yesterday  he  as  much  as  said  you  were 
as  stupid  as  you  were  hopeful.  '  If  such  a  miracle 
is  possible,'  is  the  way  he  said  it." 

Charley  wriggled.  His  invention  and  his  belief 
that  he  was  clever  were  tender  points  with  him. 

"  There's  money  in  my  game,"  he  said,  "  and 
there  isn't  any  in  Jim's." 

"  Then  listen."  It  was  too  dark  for  them  to  see 
each  other's  faces,  but  Edith  spread  wide  her  arms. 
"  Whatever  I've  done  was  for  you.  Whatever  I 
will  do  will  be  for  you.  It's  not  wrong;  but  if  it  was 
I'd  do  it  for  your  sake.  It's  our  only  chance,  Char 
ley.  Sb  if  you  don't  want  me,  say  so  now,  for  by 
to-morrow  it'll  be  too  late.  I'm  to  leave  this  apart 
ment  in  the  morning." 

His  answer  was  the  answer  that,  loving  him,  shf 


JIM  13 

could   not   but    want.      The    jibes    of   Jim's    scorn 
added  to  the  strength  of  her  appeal.     Charley  rose 
and  put  his  arms  about  her.     He  said  what  she 
had  said  a  few  moments  before.     He  said: 
"  I  love  you." 


SECOND  CHAPTER 

"TT'NOW  thyself,"  adjured  the  Greek  philoso- 
•^  pher,  and  left  us  without  a  text-book.  It 
is  a  text-book  unlikely  ever  to  be  compiled, 
and  yet  not  until  a  man  knows  himself  can  he  know 
another  man.  How  much  is  environment  and  how 
much  heredity?  The  seed  is  lost  in  the  root,  the 
cause  in  the  effect.  Could  they  be  found,  the  puzzle 
would  still  remain  infinite.  When  the  inevitable 
results  of  environment  had  been  subtracted,  and  the 
inevitable  results  of  heredity,  what  would  be  left 
that  was  the  individual  soul,  and  what  for  which  the 
individual  soul  was  responsible?  Years  of  intimacy 
refuse  the  answer,  a  lifelong  familiarity  fails  to 
produce  the  perfect  acquaintance.  Hate  under 
stands  much,  but  not  all;  love  understands  more,  but 
not  all;  only  omniscience  can  suffice.  Thus  you  and 
your  neighbor;  thus  she  that  once  was  Edith  Moxton 
and  now  was  Edith  Trent. 

Edith  Moxton  used  to  sit  in  the  twilight  and 
dream  dreams;  Edith  Trent  sat  in  the  twilight  and 
dreamed  them.  The  woman  at  the  apartment-house 
window  had  been  the  girl  of  the  small  up-state  town. 
Now  she  was  Edith  Trent  with  nothing  of  Edith 
Moxton  about  her;  they  had  in  common  only  the  hu 
man  organism  that  both  had  in  common  with  all 
humanity;  they  were  impassable  miles  apart.  The 
very  trail  that  led  from  that  earliest  Edith  to  this 
latest  was  lost  in  the  desert  of  her  life;  choked  by 

14 


JIM  15 

weeds,  obliterated  by  drifting  sands,  barred  by 
boulders.  Even  thought  could  not  trace  it. 

Edith  Moxton's  home  had  been  in  a  western  New 
York  town  called  Ayton,  and  her  life  there  was  a 
life  among  failures.  Her  mother  died  in  child 
birth,  leaving  three  sons  and  Edith,  the  third  child, 
to  the  care  of  a  trio  of  aunts  for  whom  Edith's 
father  provided  a  more  or  less  precarious  livelihood 
until  he  succumbed  to  general  inefficiency.  He  had 
kept  a  "  grocery-store  " — held  it  by  the  severest  ex 
ertions,  since  it  was  always  trying  to  run  away  from 
him — and  the  effort  was  entirely  too  great. 

"  It's  his  kidneys,"  his  sister  Caroline  used  to 
say.  "  He  finds  the  grocery  business  very  trying 
on  the  kidneys." 

When  the  grocery  had  quite  crushed  Mr.  Moxton, 
and  his  estate  was  settled,  the  store  made  a  last  leap 
for  freedom  and  got  away  altogether,  Uncle  Morty, 
one  of  the  decedent's  two  surviving  brothers, 
mounted  gayly  on  its  back  and  spurring  it  splen 
didly  forward.  Uncle  Morty  had  a  bald  head,  a 
pug-nose,  an  overhanging  red  mustache,  and  little 
brown  eyes,  and  when  he  returned  to  the  Moxton 
house  he  returned  on  foot.  He  always  said  that  his 
mount  had  thrown  him;  Edith,  in  later  years,  always 
said  that  he  traded  it  for  a  bicycle-shop  of  which 
he  presently  appeared  to  be  the  owner. 

Then  began  Edith's  girlhood.  In  this  the  most 
important  factor  was  her  relatives. 

First  and  least  important,  there  was  her  other 
uncle,  Uncle  Gregory.  He  was  a  fat  man  that 
breathed  hard.  His  voice  was  as  sharp  as  a  par 
rot's  and,  indeed,  he  looked  a  good  deal  like  a  plump 


16  JIM 

cockatoo — a  cockatoo  in  shepherd's  plaid.  He  was 
said  to  practice  painless  dentistry  in  Chicago,  but  he 
had  no  need  to  pass  from  practice  to  proficiency:  he 
selected  from  among  his  woman-patients  one  that 
combined  money  with  heavy  chances  of  mortality, 
married  her,  inherited  her  estate — and  kept  it  to 
himself.  On  his  rare  visits  to  Ayton,  he  was  wor 
shiped  by  his  three  sisters,  Edith's  aunts,  who  occa 
sionally  secured  a  month's  house-rent  in  return ;  but 
Edith  disliked  him  because  he  used  to  call  her 
"  Poor  Penelope  " — she  never  knew  why — and  she 
would  evoke  her  aunt's  awed  laughter  by  thrusting 
out  her  chest,  puffing  her  little  cheeks,  and  present 
ing  a  passable  caricature  of  him. 

Douglas,  the  youngest  of  Edith's  brothers,  early 
left  home  for  Rochester,  where  he  managed  to  get 
a  place  in  the  camera-factory;  just  as  he  reached  a 
salary  that,  as  his  Aunt  Polly  put  it,  "  might  have 
helped,"  he  returned  to  Ayton  to  marry  a  girl  that 
the  family  considered  inferior:  they  saw  little  of 
him  thereafter.  The  eldest  brother,  Fred,  married 
a  well-to-do  girl  in  Duncannon,  Pennsylvania,  and 
got  control  of  his  blind  brother-in-law's  business. 
With  that  business  he  took  over  a  blond  stenog 
rapher,  the  daughter  of  a  waiter  in  a  Philadelphia 
cafe  of  odd  repute.  When,  at  last,  the  stenographer 
took  over  Fred,  she  got  the  business  along  with 
him — or  its  capital — and  the  pair  vanished  in  the 
dust-cloud  of  the  collapse.  Stephen,  the  remaining 
son,  having  a  less  sprightly  mind  than  either  of  his 
brothers,  was  sent  to  Hobart  and  educated  for  the 
Episcopal  ministry,  which  his  aunts  somehow  con 
sidered  was  a  means  of  making  a  gentleman  of  him. 


JIM  17 

He  acquired,  with  laudable  celerity,  that  hall-mark 
of  proficient  anglicanism,  the  art  of  microscopic 
penmanship,  and  was  soon  able  to  open  his  Bible 
at  random  and  compose  a  sermon  that  found  a  hid 
den  wealth  of  divine  counsel  in  the  very  conjunc 
tions  and  prepositions  of  any  verse  he  chanced 
upon.  He  had  a  pretty,  bovine  face  and  the  stub 
born  sullenness  of  native  stupidity.  Nevertheless, 
he  knew  enough  to  talk  little,  out  of  his  pulpit,  so 
he  acquired  a  parish  in  Batavia.  He  also  married 
money,  in  the  person  of  a  former  sweetheart  of  his 
sprightly  brother  Fred ;  but  she  held  her  own  purse, 
and  the  aunts,  who  had  been  outspoken  in  their 
expectations,  profited  not  at  all. 

Those  aunts  were  self-seeking  only  because  they 
were  unsought.  Essentially,  they  were  harmless 
enough  creatures;  town-gossip  had  concerned  itself 
with  them  in  their  younger  days,  but  the  ebb  of  their 
charms  left  the  flat  shore  of  their  later  life  vacu 
ously  even.  Of  the  three,  Caroline,  the  eldest,  was 
considered  the  lady :  her  role  was  to  do  none  of  the 
housework  (the  Moxtons  could  no  longer  afford  a 
servant)  and  to  sit  all  day  in  the  shaded  parlor,  made 
up  to  resemble  Martha  Washington,  in  black  silk, 
with  a  bit  of  white  lace  at  her  throat,  her  high- 
heaped  coiffure  looking  as  if  it  were  powdered;  she 
kept  her  lips  pursed  and  her  hands  folded;  in  reality, 
poverty  had  made  her  a  coward,  and  her  aim'  in  life 
was  the  avoidance  of  further  discomfort.  Polly, 
the  youngest,  was  a  fat  and  frank  vulgarian,  who 
came  home  after  the  failures  of  the  various  ribbon- 
shops  that  she  would  from  time  to  time  borrow 
money  to  establish;  she  used  to  say — she  had  one  of 


i8  JIM 

those  voices,  born  for  interruption,  which  drown  all 
competitors — that  she  liked  to  eat  apple-sauce  with 
pork  "because  it  cuts  the  grease";  for  ten  years 
she  told  her  friends  that  there  was  every  likelihood 
of  her  marrying  a  Buffalo  lawyer,  but,  at  the  end  of 
a  decade,  the  Buffalo  lawyer  married  another  woman, 
and  Polly's  own  lawyer  decided  that  there  were  not 
sufficient  grounds  for  Polly's  proposed  breach-of- 
promise  suit. 

Remained  Aunt  Hattie — stout,  kittenish  Aunt  Hat- 
tie  of  the  beady  black  eyes,  the  perpetually  fluttering 
eyelids,  the  ineradicable  smile.  On  her  uncomplain 
ing  shoulders  descended  all  the  work  of  the  house, 
yet  she  accomplished  it  and  had  time,  though  not 
always  pupils,  for  music-lessons.  At  the  piano  she 
possessed  facility  without  feeling,  a  prevalent  di 
vision,  and  she  liked  easy  shoes  and  strict  clergymen. 
Especially  the  clergymen.  "  My  nephew  the  clergy 
man  "  haunted  her  conversation  like  a  Wagnerian 
motif.  Her  memory  was  a  portrait-gallery  entirely 
filled  by  the  long  succession  of  clergymen  that, 
during  her  lifetime,  had  been  rectors  of  her  parish- 
church.  That  the  full-fledged  priest,  even  in 
Stephen,  was  an  archangel  to  her  eyes  logically 
follows,  and  of  what  a  Bishop  was,  reverence  for 
bids  mention;  but  there  long  endured  one  lay- 
reader,  a  Mr.  Tschudy,  otherwise  engaged  in  the 
sardine-line,  whom  she  daily  quoted  with  a  gusto  that 
placed  him  above  Epiphanius.  For,  with  her,  re 
ligion  was  not  only  a  passion;  it  was  all  the  passions 
and,  what  is  well-nigh  as  important,  all  the  joys — 
one  might  perhaps  better  say  the  sole  joy — of  her 
stifled  heart.  It  was  not  merely  joyous;  it  was 


JIM  19 

hilarious.  Those  apostles  who  urged  upon  the  early 
Christians  the  joy  of  religion  would  have  been 
amazed  had  they  known  Aunt  Hattie  and  seen  how 
her  rock-founded  faith  was  a  temple  of  glee.  What 
Mr.  Gilbert's  Mikado  found  in  the  perfection  of 
human  justice,  Aunt  Hattie  discovered  in  the  per 
fection  of  her  own  creed:  "a  source  of  infinite 
merriment."  She  loved  to  front  the  skeptics;  she 
would  rout  them  with  laughter. 

"Ha,  ha!"  she  would  laugh.  "Ha,  ha!  But 
you  can't — oh,  ha,  ha,  ho,  ho ! — you  can't  get  away— j- 
ha,  ha!  You  can't  get  away  from  Jesus  Christ!  " 

These  were  the  persons,  absent  and  present,  whose 
influence  pervaded  the  shifting  Moxton  habitation. 
Nor  were  the  houses  in  which  the  family  dwelt — 
they  had  to  move  often  and  always  to  a  smaller 
house — any  better  suited  for  the  rearing  of  a  girl 
that  was  to  become  an  artist's  wife. 

Except  in  size,  they  were  much  alike,  those  houses. 
The  first-floor  front  was  always  reserved  as  Uncle 
Morty's  bedroom,  and  the  rear  room  on  the  same 
floor  was  always  a  sitting-room,  where  the  sewing- 
machine  was  kept  and  where  were  done  the  darnings, 
the  takings-in,  the  lettings-out,  the  almost  miraculous 
regenerations  of  the  family  wardrobe.  The  other 
upstairs  rooms  were  parceled  out  among  the  aunts 
with  a  care  for  Caroline's  gentility  and  Polly's 
assertiveness:  Hattie  could  go  anywhere,  and  Edith 
must  find  such  place  as  was  left.  Finally,  the 
front  room  on  the  ground  floor  was  the  parlor. 
Either  because  of  convention  inherited  from  rustic 
ancestors,  or  because  its  windows  looked  so  directly 
on  the  pavement  of  the  street  that  pedestrians  could 


20  JIM 

see  inside,  this  chamber  was  kept  in  a  perpetual 
gloom.  It  contained  the  old  square  piano;  a  horse 
hair  sofa  that  sagged  in  the  middle,  but  sent  dar 
ing  occupants  sliding  off  at  the  ends;  a  crayon  por 
trait  of  Edith's  father  in  a  ponderous  gilt  frame,  and, 
decorated  with  what  Aunt  Caroline  called  a  "  tidy," 
the  hair-stuffed  spring-rocking-chair  in  which,  she 
was  wont  to  inform  the  visitor  that  sat  in  it,  her 
dear  brother  had  died.  Aunt  Caroline  used  to  de 
scribe  his  last  agonies  with  what  was  the  only  spark 
of  literary  feeling  in  the  Moxton  menage. 

Everybody  deferred  to  the  pug-nosed,  red- 
mustached  Uncle  Morty.  To  him  even  Aunt  Caroline 
was  second.  What  money  the  house  secured  was 
largely  dependent  upon  his  whim,  and  his  whim  was 
the  child  of  his  comfort.  The  result  was  a  lesson 
in  eugenics.  Uncle  Morty's  bedroom  was  sacred; 
the  cooking  of  a  beefsteak  beyond  the  shade  of 
Uncle  Morty's  taste  in  meat-colors  was  a  genuine 
calamity;  Uncle  Morty's  jokes  must  be  applauded; 
if  his  slippers  were  not  warmed  for  him  every  even 
ing — if  his  bag  were  not  packed  on  the  Summer 
morning  before  he,  the  only  member  of  the  family 
to  take  a  vacation,  started  for  Cape  May,  grocer's 
bills  were  sure  to  be  overdue. 

Edith  did  not  love  these  people  or  their  surround 
ings.  Her  Uncle  Gregory  she  had  always  ridiculed; 
her  Uncle  Morty  she  feared.  She  despised  Douglas 
because  of  his  unfortunate  marriage;  Fred,  whom 
she  began  by  liking,  she  ended  by  mistrusting,  and 
Stephen,  when  the  childish  reverence  for  him  that 
she  had  learned  from  her  aunts  wore  away,  she  pro- 
jiounced  a  bore.  Her  Aunt  Polly,  Edith  enjoyed  so 


JIM  21 

long  as  none  of  her  friends  was  about  to  observe 
the  woman's  coarseness,  but  Caroline  and  the  patient 
Hattie  were  types  that  do  not  attract  the  admiration 
of  girlhood. 

For  this,  her  companionships  and  amusements,  of 
which  she  had  as  many  as  most  girls,  could  not  com 
pensate.  Failure,  she  early  realized,  was  all  about 
her;  it  surrounded  her,  smothered  her.  The  town 
was  a  failure — that  was  the  era  when  the  American 
cities  began  most  heavily  to  drain  the  smaller  towns 
— Uncle  Morty  and  her  aunts  were  failures;  her 
brothers — with  the  possible  exception  of  Fred,  who 
had  at  least  the  spirit  of  adventure  in  him,  which  she 
loved — were  failures  in  a  subtler,  but  equally  dread 
ful  way.  And  Edith,  perhaps  at  first  from  the  sheer 
human  demand  for  contrast,  hungered  and  thirsted 
for  success. 

Thus  grew  the  dominant  appetite  of  her  life:  her 
hatred  of  failure  and  that  hatred's  corresponding 
love  of  success.  She  wanted  to  climb  out  of  the  one 
and  into  the  other.  She  would  sacrifice  anything  for 
that.  She  wanted  to  replace  Ayton  by  New  York. 
She  wanted  to  be  quit  of  pinched  pennies.  She 
wanted,  at  first  only  a  measure,  and  then  a  great 
deal  of  ease  and  comfort,  of  notice  and  attention 
and  gayety.  Her  father,  out  of  the  wreck  wrought 
by  the  grocery-store,  had  left  her  a  little  money — 
not  much,  but  a  little.  When  she  came  into  that, 
she  would  use  it  to  gain  her  heart's  desire.  She 
wanted  to  be  a  woman  that  was  not  carebound,  with 
a  man  of  that  company  which  does  the  things  that 
count.  This  was  poetry  to  her  and  romance.  She 
dreamed  of  it;  night  by  night  she  prayed  for  it. 


22  JIM 

Then,  when  she  was  twenty-one,  Uncle  Morty,  as 
her  father's  executor,  showed  her  figures  to  explain 
how  her  inheritance  had  been  consumed  by  the  avun 
cular  outlay  for  her  board,  clothes,  and  education. 
Until  she  met  Jim,  who  came  from  the  neighboring 
town  of  Bryll,  there  was  no  way  out. 

She  fell  in  love  with  Jim.  She  made  him  the 
way  out. 

§  2.  In  the  Episcopal  Church  there  was  in  those 
days — it  still  lingers  here  and  there — a  strong  prej 
udice  against  divorce.  Stephen  had  put  it  on  as  a 
matter  of  course  as  he  had  put  on  his  surplice  and 
accepted  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  which,  to  save  his 
life,  he  could  not  have  repeated.  Uncle  Gregory 
had  it:  death  had  rid  him  of  his  wife.  The  aunts 
had  it:  they  had  never  married.  Douglas  and 
Fred  did  not  matter.  In  this  one  particular,  Edith 
started  by  sharing  the  feelings  of  the  majority  of 
her  family.  Probably  very  few  people  marry  with 
any  thought  of  divorce.  Certainly  she  did  not. 
Yet  she  was  now  planning  a  divorce. 

She  had  decided  that  Jim  was  a  failure.  She  was 
sure  she  could  have  forgiven  him  for  being  what 
she  described  as  "  too  slow  ":  she  could  not  forgive 
anyone  for  stopping  short  of  success. 

In  New  York  she  was  living  better  than  any  Mox- 
ton  had  ever  lived  in  Ayton;  but  that  was  not  the 
point.  She  was  particular  about  her  clothes,  prefer 
ring  the  expensive  old  to  an  inexpensive  new;  but 
that  was  not  the  point.  She  liked  this  small  suite  of 
studio-apartments  in  Sixty-seventh  Street  with  its 
undeniable  beauties  and  conveniences,  its  proximity 


JIM  23 

to  the  St.  Nicholas  Rink,  and  its  nearness  to  the 
great  Park  that  made  the  Park  seem  partly  hers; 
but  neither  was  that  the  point.  The  point  was  that 
she  was  here  what  she  had  been  in  Ayton:  she  was 
subservient  to  the  restriction  of  conditions;  what  dif 
ference  there  was  was  of  degree.  Pinched  pennies 
had  given  place  to  pinched  fifty-cent  pieces :  the  pinch 
was  as  deep  as  ever.  So  far  as  she  could  see,  Jim 
would  live  and  die  an  unknown  and  struggling  artist. 
She  hated  failure  :  Jim  personified  it. 

His  friends  wearied  her  as  much  as  he  did:  they 
talked  of  art  as  if  it  were  a  serious  business,  and  they 
treated  her  with  a  politeness  in  which  she  read  noth 
ing  but  an  amused  toleration.  Her  own  acquaint 
ances  were  better:  she  disliked,  to  be  sure,  the  prim 
Mrs.  Entwhistle,  who  lived  in  the  suite  across  the 
hall  and  called  dutifully  every  tenth  day  whether 
Edith  returned  the  call  or  not ;  and  she  snubbed  pretty 
Effie  Mitchell,  who  also  lived  in  the  studio-building 
and  was  suspected  of  not  being  quite  all  that  she 
should  be ;  but  Muriel  Carson  was  a  good  girl  whom 
Edith  respected,  and  Mrs.  Dunbar,  who  had  been 
mere  Jean  Dent  in  Ayton,  was  now  married  to  a 
young  broker  with  a  family  that  lived  on  Madison 
Avenue — Edith  cultivated  Muriel  for  Muriel's  own 
sake  and  Mrs.  Dunbar  for  the  sake  of  Madison  Ave 
nue;  both  had  invited  Mrs.  Trent  to  their  houses, 
and  Mrs.  Trent  met  successful  people  there.  Finally, 
into  her  life  Diana  Wentworth  had  lately  come  and 
gave  promise  of  remaining. 

Diana  was  a  higher  assistant  in  a  free  library, 
but  aspired  to  better  things.  She  wore  dark  gowns 
and  had  black  hair,  both  of  which  served  to  en- 


24  JIM 

hance  the  merits  of  a  pale  face,  handsomely  mod 
eled.  She  talked  a  pseudo-radicalism,  full  of  capital 
letters,  which  rather  shocked  Edith.  When  it 
appeared  that  Jim  did  not  care  for  Diana,  Edith 
felt  moved  to  like  her.  After  that  the  friendship 
progressed. 

"  Freedom,"  Diana  would  sigh.  "  That  is  what 
Woman  requires:  Freedom.  She  must  not  be  de 
pendent  on  Man's  favors.  She  must  make  Man  give 
her  Freedom." 

They  got  along  splendidly  now:  they  shared  a 
basis  of  conventionality  that  each  thought  the  other 
lacked. 

For  such  a  woman  as  Edith  to  have  a  child  is 
sometimes  the  salvation  of  the  mother,  as  it  is  some 
times  the  damnation  of  the  child,  but  Edith,  avoid 
ing  what  Diana  described  as  "  the  ultimate  servi 
tude,"  hungered,  as  we  have  seen,  for  another  sort 
of  success.  During  a  long  time  she  reached  for 
it  timidly  and  touched  it  only  in  secret.  Her  first 
philandering  she  bitterly  regretted;  the  second  re 
sulted  only  in  fears  of  detection;  after  that,  until 
she  met  Charley,  such  pleasantries  were  no  more 
than  the  price  she  paid  for  a  few  hours'  taste  of 
freedom  from  care.  "  You're  the  sort  of  woman 
that  never  knows  a  stone-wall  till  she's  batted  her 
head  against  it,"  George  Mertcheson  had  once  said 
to  her;  she  wondered  if  she  had  struck  her  head 
against  the  stone-wall  now. 

§  3.  It  was  Jim  that  presented  Charley.  They 
had  met  a  few  times  at  Charley's  club,  and  the  hus 
band  brought  Vanaman  home  with  him. 


JIM  25 

For  a  week,  perhaps  a  fortnight,  she  thought 
Vanaman  uncouth.  She  ridiculed  him  to  her  friends. 
Then,  quite  suddenly,  she  was  in  love.  She  knew 
now  that  she  had  been  so  from  the  moment  of  their 
meeting. 

Much  has  been  said  against  love  at  first  sight, 
most  of  it  unconvincing.  Really,  there  is  no  other 
sort  of  love.  What  grows  slowly,  cautiously,  may  be 
more  enduring;  it  may  be  friendship,  it  may  be  last 
ing  affection,  but  it  is  not  love.  Deliberation,  self- 
examination — these  involve  doubt  and  hesitancy,  and 
where  love  is  there  can  be  neither  hesitancy  nor 
doubt.  Friendship  and  affection  come  from  within 
us  and,  beginning  in  the  brain,  extend  to  the  heart; 
but  love  comes,  when  it  comes  at  all,  from  without ; 
it  comes  as  if  it  were  some  elemental  force  that 
sweeps  from  the  infinite  through  the  universe,  that 
catches  up  and  engulfs  such  frail  humanity  as  chances 
in  its  path,  and  sweeps  its  victims  forward  to  its 
own  ends.  A  pair  of  lovers  are  as  helpless  as  two 
bits  of  driftwood  on  a  tidal-wave:  the  wave  bears 
them  with  it,  reckless  of  their  will. 

It  was  in  this  fashion  Edith  loved  Vanaman.  She 
had  never  had  the  power  of  seeing  things  in  their 
beginning,  though,  when  she  did  see  them,  she  saw 
them  in  strong  lights.  This  light  was  as  the  full 
gaze  of  the  sun:  it  blinded  her  to  everything  else; 
it  blotted  out  all  the  lesser  lights  of  the  past.  What 
she  called  uncouthness  she  now  called  power. 

Charley  was  an  inventor,  not  a  mere  painter  of  pic 
tures  that  a  few  persons  might  or  might  not  care 
about,  but  a  force  that  could  leave  its  impress  in  every 
corner  of  the  globe,  on  trade,  on  affairs,  on  the  daily 


26  JIM 

lives  of  men  and  women  as  yet  unborn.  He  was  no 
mere  mechanic;  indeed,  he  had  no  talent  for  tools: 
what  he  had  was  a  mighty  idea.  Moreover,  he  had 
traveled  in  strange  countries;  the  launching  of  his 
telegraphic  sounder  was  bringing  him  into  contact 
with  financial  giants;  he  was  the  only  son  of  a  well- 
to-do  father.  Here  at  last  was  success;  here  at  last 
was  a  man  that  had  done  something  and  would  do 
more.  It  did  not  matter  that  she  was  slightly  his 
senior.  She  thrilled  at  his  touch;  she  hung  on  his 
words;  when  he  came  near  her,  the  blood  flooded 
her  cheeks  and  dimmed  her  sight;  the  first  time  that 
he  kissed  her,  she  nearly  fainted  in  his  arms. 

And  to  Vanaman  Edith  was  all  that  he  was  to 
her.  His  earliest  glance  saw  her  as  a  woman  of  such 
radiant  health  that  it  seemed  as  if  nothing  man  could 
do  to  her  would  hurt  her;  his  later  talks  convinced 
him  that  she  was  a  neglected  beauty  chained  to  an 
unappreciative  failure.  At  his  own  home  his  father 
generally  discouraged  talk  of  the  invention,  but 
Edith  urged  him  to  talk  of  it.  He  read  in  her  the 
adventurous  soul;  himself  a  shy  man,  not  the  least 
of  his  inventions  were  most  of  his  adventures;  but 
from  her  he  felt  that  he  could  draw  the  courage 
to  make  his  business-venture  real.  When  he  talked 
to  her,  the  dreary  repression  of  his  own  home  faded 
into  the  remotest  distance.  Here  was  a  brave 
woman,  a  woman  that  dared;  here  was  his  oppo 
site,  his  completion.  Before  her  vanished  the 
bluster  with  which  he  habitually  hid  his  shyness; 
his  carefully  assumed  air  of  rugged  effrontery  was 
replaced  by  a  new  tenderness.  He  could  not  enter 
the  room  in  which  she  sat  without  experiencing  that 


JIM  27 

physical  exaltation  which  told  him  he  was  another 
man.  Married  to  Edith,  he  would  be  that  man  until 
the  day  he  died.  He  had  the  conventional  sense 
of  honor  that  few  conventional  men  possess — had 
it  so  entirely  that  he  never  thought  of  retaining 
without  marriage  the  gift  that  he  had  filched  from 
marriage.  He  felt  that  he  needed  Edith  in  a  rela 
tion  in  which  he  could  present  her,  at  last,  to  his 
world;  he  felt  that  he  must  have  her  in  the  bonds 
of  a  companionship  that,  though  he  and  she  com 
bined  to  break  her  companionship  with  Jim,  were 
still  the  strongest  man  had  devised;  he  felt  that 
duty  pointed  where  need  pointed  and  desire:  so  long 
as  there  was  no  other  way  to  have  her,  he  wanted 
Edith  for  his  mistress;  but,  above  all  else,  he  wanted, 
so  soon  as  he  could  bring  the  change  about,  to  make 
her  his  wife. 

Since  they  saw  each  other  in  this  light,  it  was 
scarcely  to  be  expected  that  either  of  them  would  see 
Edith  as  she  was  seen  in  the  picture  her  husband 
had  painted  of  her.  Charley  hated  that  picture 
almost  as  much  as  he  hated  the  fact  of  Edith's  mar 
riage;  Edith  hated  it  almost  as  much  as  she  hated 
Jim.  Charley  thought  of  her  always  as  she  was  with 
him;  Edith  thought  of  herself  always  as  she  was 
after  six  o'clock  in  the  evening:  the  picture  was  an 
obvious  attempt  to  represent  her  at  8  A.M. 

"  And  I  asked  him,"  she  had  complained  to  one 
of  Jim's  artist  friends,  "  what  he  was  going  to  call 
it,  and  he  said  he  was  going  to  call  it '  A  Woman  ' !  " 

The  friend  looked  at  her  with  mild  incomprehen 
sion. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "it  is  a  woman,  isn't  it?" 


28  JIM 

§  4.  When  Charley  had  left  her  on  that  decisive 
Spring  evening,  she  reseated  herself  at  the  window 
and  tried  again  to  review  many  of  these  things. 
They  fixed  her  determination.  They  intensified  her 
hunger  for  the  success  at  hand  and  lashed  her  to 
indignation  against  the  failure  that  still  surrounded 
her.  They  sharpened  her  love  for  Vanaman. 

Well,  it  was  done  now,  the  thing  that  would  end 
the  past  and  begin  the  future.  She  had  told  Jim 
she  would  take  apartments  for  herself  next  morn 
ing,  and  she  had  secured  his  promise  to  pay  the 
rent  for  them  until  the  granting  of  the  divorce. 
More  than  that  she  had  not  hoped  for:  Charley 
must  help  her  and  alimony  she  would  not  seek  for 
the  excellent  reason  that  the  least  alimony — and 
even  Edith  knew  this  could  easily  be  proved — was 
beyond  Jim's  means. 

So  she  might  think  now  about  Charley.  His 
father  was  a  crabbed  old  man,  an  old-fashioned 
old  man  who  disliked  her,  but — there  was  no  use 
in  blinking  at  facts — an  old  man  who  was  dying. 
Charley's  sister,  who,  with  Charley,  would  thus 
soon  be  the  only  survivor  of  the  Vanaman  family, 
was  an  utterly  suppressed  person,  a  nonentity. 
Nothing  stood  against  Edith's  plans,  and  with  them 
stood  love,  the  resolution  to  succeed,  and  this  Spring 
evening's  wonderful  promise  of  a  youth  renewed. 

Only  last  Sunday  she  had  heard  the  good  Bishop 
Peel  preach  a  sermon  on  the  joy  of  youth.  He  read 
from  the  Psalms : 

"  Bless  the  Lord,  O  my  soul  .  .  .  who  redeemeth 
thy  life  from  destruction  .  .  .  so  that  thy  youth  is 
renewed  like  the  eagle's."  Her  youth  was  renewed, 


JIM  29 

and  she  thanked  God  for  it.  Her  youth  was  re 
newed,  and,  thank  God,  she  was  going  to  give  it  to 
Charley. 

There  was  another  sound  at  the  door.    It  was  Jim 
coming  home. 


THIRD  CHAPTER 

A  he  picked  up  the  telephone-receiver  in  his  bed 
room  on  that  raw  Monday  morning  in  Octo 
ber,  Vanaman  noticed  that  his  hand  shook, 
and  it  occurred  to  him  to  wonder  if  he  was  afraid 
of  the  woman  he  was  about  to  talk  to.  He  could 
not  understand  how  it  was  possible  for  a  man  to  be 
afraid  of  a  woman  that  he  loved. 

u  Hudson,  one-two-nine-three,"  he  ordered. 

In  his  ear  the  number  was  presently  repeated: 

"  One-two-nine-thr-r-ree,  Hudson." 

"  That's  right,"  said  Vanaman. 

It  was  only  a  little  while  before  that  he  had 
crawled  out  of  bed.  There  was  a  mirror  on  the  wall 
beside  the  telephone  and,  as  he  waited,  he  glanced 
at  it. 

"  I'm  fine,  I  am !  "  he  muttered  to  his  reflection. 
"  I  look  almost  as  bad  as  I  feel." 

He  was  indeed  looking  badly.  Ordinarily  a  short, 
stocky  man  with  pink  cheeks  and  an  aggressive  face, 
to-day  he  seemed  shrunken  and  dull.  His  eyes,  al 
ways  prominent,  were  now  red  and  bulging  like  a 
frog's.  His  hair,  which  he  had  not  yet  brushed,  rose 
dry  and  brittle  from  his  round  poll,  and  his  mouth 
hung  so  heavily  that  it  tugged  at  his  cheeks.  He 
remembered  that,  after  taking  Edith  back  to  her 
rooms  last  night,  he  had  gone  to  his  club  and  had 
some  more  to  drink,  but  he  could  not  remember 
leaving  the  club.  He  fervently  hoped  that  he  had 

30 


JIM  31 

not  disgraced  himself  there;  in  his  affections  and 
pride  his  club  held  a  place  next  to  Edith  and  his 
invention.  .  .  .  Well,  he  must  stop  at  a  barber's 
and  have  his  face  massaged.  He  thought  of  the 
grateful  hot  towels.  .  .  .  The  massage  would  take 
away  the  physical  signs  of  his  mistake:  he  had  not 
been  a  heavy  drinker  for  a  long  enough  time  to 
bear  indelible  markings.  But  he  did  hope  that,  at 
the  club, • 

"Hello!" 

The  word  was  sharp  and  irritable.  It  darted  into 
his  head  as  if  it  were  an  arrow. 

Charley  started.  "  I  wish  she  wouldn't  spring 
herself  that  way,"  he  thought.  But  he  achieved  a 
smile ;  he  felt  that,  even  in  a  telephone  conversation 
with  Edith,  his  face  must  not  show  disloyalty.  After 
all,  he  was  not  disloyal;  he  was,  and  for  months  had 
been,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  thoroughly  in 
love. 

"  Good-morning,  dear,"  he  said. 

"Who's  talking?" 

He  was  annoyed.  Could  there,  he  reflected,  be 
any  mistake? 

"  Isn't  this  Mrs.  Trent?  "  he  inquired. 

"  If  you  don't  tell  me  who's  talking,  I'll  ring  off." 

No  mistaking  her  voice  now:  it  was  Edith's. 

"  This  is  Charley,"  said  Vanaman.  "  Didn't  you 
recognize  me?  " 

"  No,  I  didn't." 

"  But,  dearie,  I've  been  calling  you  about  this  time 
every  morning  for  weeks,  and 

"  And  I've  always  told  you  to  give  your  name  first. 
You  know  we  can't  be  too  careful." 


32  JIM 

"  Nonsense.  It  doesn't  matter  now.  It's  all  over 
but  the  signing  of  the  decree." 

"  Perhaps  it  is,  but  you  can  never  tell.  I'm  be 
ginning  to  believe  this  thing  hasn't  any  end." 

Vanaman  chuckled.  He  was  one  of  those  men 
who  like  to  feel  that  the  women  they  love  are  their 
inferiors  in  common  sense. 

"Poof!"  said  he.  "That's  what  I  wanted  to 
talk  to  you  about.  I've  just  been  calling  up  Schultz's 
office.  I  slept  late  this  morning,  and  I  thought  per 
haps " 

"What  did  he  say?" 

"  Just  a  moment,  please.  I  slept  late,  and  I 
thought  perhaps " 

"  Oh,  do  tell  me  what  the  lawyer  said!  " 

"  All  right."  It  seemed  to  Vanaman  that  he  was 
always  being  interrupted.  "  He  said  there  was  no 
question  the  decree  would  be  signed  to-day." 

Charley  believed  that  this  would  be  good  news 
and  would  be  received  accordingly,  but  the  voice 
in  his  ear  began  its  reply  with  a  gasp  of  dissatis 
faction. 

"  To-day?  I  should  think  it  would!  Don't  they 
know  that  we  want  to  have  it  all  straightened  out 
by  this  afternoon?  " 

"Why,  Edith " 

"  Didn't  you  tell  Schultz  that?  I  told  you  to  tell 
him  that." 

"  Yes,  I  told  him  that;  but  Schultz  isn't  the  judge, 
dear." 

"  Well,  he  can  tell  the  judge." 

"How  could  he,  Edith?  He's  only  one  of  the 
lawyers  in  the  case,  and  the " 


JIM  33 

"  If  he's  much  of  a  lawyer,  I  should  think  he 
could  hurry  things  a  little.  Is  that  all  he  said?  " 

"  Yes,  that's  all,  but  it's  pretty  good.  You 
see " 

"  Why  don't  you  come  up  here?  " 

Vanaman's  haggard  cheeks  colored  with  the  red 
of  pleasure. 

"  I  was  going  to  ask  if  I  might,"  he  said.  "  I 
thought  it  would  be  so  nice  if  we  could  be  together 
when  the  news  came.  I  thought " 

"  All  right.    Come  on." 

There  was  a  click  in  his  ear.  He  knew  that  she 
had  hung  up  the  receiver  at  her  end  of  the  line. 

§  2.  Vanaman  turned  to  dress.  He  was  a  man 
approaching  thirty,  already  tending  toward  slug 
gishness.  He  was  inclined  to  be  careless  in  the 
matter  of  his  clothes;  when,  for  instance,  he  wanted 
to  appear  fashionable,  and  thought  he  was  going  to 
a  place  where  he  would  not  have  to  open  his  over 
coat,  his  custom  was  to  retain  a  sack  suit  and  put 
on  a  silk  hat.  This  morning,  however,  he  made  his 
toilet,  though  painfully,  with  uncommon  care. 

The  past  few  months  had  allowed  him  days  and 
nights  of  delirious  happiness,  but  not  one  hour  of 
comfort.  The  Summer  vacation  had  brought  to  a 
standstill  all  his  endeavors  toward  interesting  finan 
ciers  in  his  invention,  and  motion  had  not  been  re 
sumed  with  the  arrival  of  Autumn.  That  was  bad 
enough.  What  was  worse  was  the  tedious  delay  of 
Edith's  divorce. 

Once  it  had  devised  divorce,  the  law  seemed  labo 
riously  to  have  hedged  it  about  with  the  most  in- 


34  JIM 

genious  difficulties.  Charley  had  known,  of  course, 
that,  whereas  the  consent  of  the  two  principals  is 
necesary  to  the  making  of  a  marriage,  the  opposi 
tion  of  one  is  the  sine  qua  non  to  its  dissolution — 
that  the  only  reason  why  two  persons  can  be  married 
is  that  they  want  to  be,  and  the  only  reason  why  they 
cannot  end  their  marriage  in  a  mutual  wish  to  end 
it — but,  with  that  lightness  of  heart  with  which  all 
who  do  not  know  the  law  enter  upon  litigation,  he 
supposed  Jim's  merely  formal  denial,  through  a  law 
yer,  of  the  charges  in  the  libel  would  suffice. 

Not  at  all.  The  trouble  began  with  the  search 
for  a  lawyer;  it  could  not  truthfully  be  said  to  be 
ended  yet. 

"  We'd  better  have  somebody  one  of  us  knows," 
Edith  had  suggested.  "  Why  not  get  your  father's 
lawyer?  What's  his  name?  Mr.  Zoller." 

"  He's  too  close  to  the  old  man,"  said  Charley. 

"  Oh,  nonsense.  Lawyers  have  to  keep  their 
clients'  secrets.  That's  professional  etiquette." 

They  went  to  Mr.  Zoller,  a  hard,  dry  little  man 
of  fifty,  who  had  a  cold  eye.  He  listened  to  Edith's 
story  with  an  expression  increasingly  grim.  When 
Charley  followed  and  began  the  account  of  Jim's  in 
fidelity  which  the  lovers  had  agreed  to  present,  Mr. 
Zoller  interrupted  by  sending  Edith  out  of  his  stuffy 
room.  Then  he  turned  to  Charley. 

"  I  can't  take  this  case,"  he  said. 

Charley's  eyes  bulged. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked. 

"  Do  you  want  me  to  tell  you?  " 

Charley  smelt  suspicion,  but  he  had  to  bluster,  so 
he  said: 


JIM  35 

"  Yes,  I  do.  Didn't  we  come  here  to  consult 
you?" 

"  Very  well.  I  won't  take  it  because  it  doesn't 
sound  straight." 

Vanaman's  color  faded.  It  was  all  that  he  could 
do  to  demand: 

"  Are  you  trying  to  tell  me  that  I'm  a  liar?  " 

"  I  said  it  didn't  sound  straight,"  the  lawyer 
calmly  explained.  "  Perhaps  I  had  better  have  said 
it  didn't  look  straight.  I've  known  you  since  you 
were  a  boy  up  in  Carmel,  Charley,  and,  anyhow, 
you've  told  me  to  speak  out.  Well,  anybody  can  see 
you're  in  love  with  the  woman,  and  I'm  too  good  a 
friend  of  your  father's  to  play  him  a  trick  like  this. 
Good-afternoon." 

Charley  recovered  enough  command  of  himself  to 
storm  until  he  saw  it  was  of  no  use.  After  that  he 
devoted  his  remaining  energies  toward  recalling  to 
Mr.  Zoller  the  lawyer's  professional  duty  to  keep 
his  client's  affairs  to  himself. 

"  I  think,"  said  Mr.  Zoller,  "  that  I  know  quite 
as  much  about  my  duties  as  you  do,  Charley.  Good- 
afternoon." 

The  expurgated  report  of  this  conversation  upset 
Edith,  and  the  reply  of  the  next  lawyer  upon  whom 
they  called  angered  her  still  more.  He  curtly  told 
them  that  he  did  not  handle  divorce-cases. 

"  The  idea !  "  she  cried,  as  they  left  the  second 
office.  "  Isn't  he  a  lawyer,  and  isn't  divorce  the 
law?" 

There  were  tears  of  vexation  in  her  eyes.  She 
was  too  discouraged  to  seek  farther  that  day. 

By  the  next  morning,  Charley  had  bethought  him- 


36  JIM 

self  of  a  friend  lately  admitted  to  the  bar.  They 
found  him  only  to  be  told  that  their  case  was  not 
strong  enough. 

"  But  you  might  try  Leishman,"  he  suggested  with 
the  tolerant  cynicism  of  the  newly-made  lawyer: 
"  he'll  take  anything." 

They  did  try  Leishman.  On  the  way  to  him  they 
felt  forced  considerably  to  strengthen  their  case. 
Leishman's  weary  face  showed  no  signs  of  approval. 

"Where's  your  corroboration? "  he  asked. 
"  You're  not  enough,  you  know,  Mr.  Vanaman." 

Charley  remembered  that  he  had  meant  to  per 
suade  a  private  detective. 

"  There's  a  detective "  he  began. 

Leishman  interrupted.  His  eyes  fixed  Charley's 
with  a  meaning  stare. 

1  You're  sure  the  husband's  lawyer  will  make  only 
a  formal  defense  and  cross-examination?" 

"  Yes." 

The  stare  was  turned  on  Edith. 
'You,  too,  madam?" 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Edith. 

Leishman  returned  his  significant  glance  to 
Charley. 

"  It  would  be  a  curious  coincidence,"  said  Leish 
man,  slowly,  "  if  the  detective  you  mean  is  one  in  the 
employ  of  the  Canarde  Agency." 

"  I'm  not  sure—      "  began  Charley. 

Leishman  raised  his  hand.    His  eyes  glared. 

"  Because,"  he  concluded,  "  the  Canarde  people 
are  friends  of  mine,  and  I  know  they  do  satisfac 
tory  work  for  my  clients — thoroughly  satisfactory." 

It  was  Edith  who  first  understood  him. 


JIM  37 

"  The  detective  does  come  from  the  Grenarde 
Agency,"  she  said. 

Her  voice  was  low,  but  Leishman  caught  her 
error. 

"  Canarde,"  he  said;  "not  Grenarde." 

"  Canarde,  of  course,"  said  Edith.  They  would 
have  to  do  it  now. 

But  Leishman  was  proceeding: 

"  And  you  say,  Mr.  Vanaman,  that  this  detective 
from  the  Canarde — C-a-n-a-r-d-e — Agency,  whose 
name  you  have  for  the  moment  forgotten,  was  with 
you  when  you  entered  the  house  that  you  had  seen 
Mr. — er — Mr.  Trent  enter  half  an  hour  before." 

In  this  manner  he  performed  the  task  that  he 
called  "  building  up  the  case."  When  he  had  fin 
ished  with  Charley,  he  secured  additional  details 
from  Edith.  There  was  no  resisting  him :  he  would 
compel  an  initial  lie  by  remarking  that,  of  course,  if 
such-and-such  were  not  the  facts,  a  decree  would 
be  impossible,  but  that  he  was  sure  such-and-such 
really  were  the  facts,  weren't  they?  The  step  would 
be  taken  and  a  hundred  more,  all  unimagined  at  the 
start,  followed  upon  it  inevitably.  By  the  time 
these  clients  left  Leishman's  office,  the  least  of 
Jim's  offenses  were  drunkenness,  lechery,  and  wife 
beating. 

And  yet,  in  the  end,  even  Leishman  failed  them. 
He  was  too  slow  and  too  expensive.  Every  few 
days  he  would  telephone  to  Edith's  apartments  for 
a  few  dollars  for  a  notary's  fee,  a  subpoena-server's 
fee,  for  one  fee  after  another,  and  when  she  began  to 
postpone  payments  the  lawyer  refused  to  proceed 
with  the  case  until  payments  were  made.  Every 


38  JIM 

move  consumed  a  week,  and  each  week  there  was  re 
vealed  a  new  move  of  the  necessity  of  which  neither 
Edith  nor  Charley  had  been  forewarned.  Edith  sent 
Charley  on  many  an  angry  errand  to  Leishman,  and 
when  Leishman  at  last  ordered  his  clerks  not  to  ad 
mit  this  caller  unless  he  had  been  especially  told  to 
call,  Edith  herself  took  to  haunting  the  offices  and 
became  a  ghost  that  the  attorney  had  to  lay  by  in 
forming  her  that  her  case  was  not  the  only  one  in 
which  he  was  retained. 

It  has  been  written  that  the  bitterest  anger  is 
that  of  quarreling  brothers,  but  the  anger  of  a  quar 
reling  brother  is  honey-sweet  compared  to  that  of  a 
dissatisfied  client  at  law.  Edith  told  Leishman  nearly 
all  that  she  thought  of  him.  She  said  she  would 
take  her  case  elsewhere,  and,  remembering  a  lawyer 
by  the  name  of  Marcus  Schultz,  who  used  to  pass 
his  Summers  near  Ayton  and  knew  her  father,  she 
took  her  case  to  him. 

She  presented  it  precisely  as  Leishman  had  "  built 
it  up."  She  had  repeated  it  so  often,  made  so  many 
affidavits  about  it  and  been  so  thoroughly  rehearsed 
in  it  that  she  was  letter-perfect  now.  By  this  time 
she  really  believed  a  large  part  of  it.  Most,  she 
had  long  since  managed  to  assure  herself,  repre 
sented  fairly  correct  guesses  at  what  was,  without 
guesswork,  merely  undemonstrably  true;  the  rest, 
she  concluded,  was  but  a  milder  name  for  still  other 
offenses  that  had  likewise  escaped  her  notice. 

The  long  and  lean  Mr.  Schultz  heard  her  out. 

"  I  don't  like  to  take  divorce-cases,"  he  said  when 
she  had  finished,  "  and  I  may  as  well  tell  you  there 
are  some  things  about  this  particular  case  that 


JIM  39 

I  especially  dislike;  but  your  father  was  a  friend  of 
mine  and  I'll  do  what  I  can  for  you." 

Edith  said:  "  Thank  you." 

44  Has  there,"  asked  Schultz,  "  been  any  other  law 
yer  in  it?  I  mean  on  your  side,  Mrs.  Trent." 

Edith  wondered  why  he  suspected  that  there  had 
been:  he  plainly  did  suspect  it.  She  nodded  an  as 
sent. 

"H'm.    Who  was  he?" 

11 A  Mr.  Leishman,"  faltered  Edith.  "  But  he 
wasn't  any  good,"  she  hurriedly  added.  4'  He  was 
always  postponing  things  and  always  asking  for 
money.  He'd  never  have  done  anything.  Why " 

"Still,"  said  Schultz,  "you  paid  him?" 

44  I  was  paying  him  something  every  other  day," 
replied  Edith,  hotly. 

44 1  see.  Well,  just  bring  me  Mr.  Leishman's 
receipted  bill  for  professional  services  to  date  and 
I'll  take  the  case." 

Edith  protested  that  she  had  already  paid  Leish 
man  out  of  all  reason,  but  Schultz  was  firm.  The 
production  of  that  receipted  bill  was  necessary  for 
the  satisfaction  of  professional  etiquette.  Besides, 
he  knew  this  man  Leishman — only  professionally, 
Schultz  was  careful  to  explain — and  he  was  the  sort 
of  person  from  whom — Well,  in  short,  that  receipt 
must  be  secured  and  shown. 

Leishman  was  exorbitant;  he  charged  for  several 
things  that  Edith  was  sure  he  had  never  done  and 
more  that  she  was  sure  she  ought  not  to  be  asked  to 
pay  for;  but  there  was  no  escape.  Somehow  Char 
ley  got  her  the  money. 

Then  it  seemed  as  if  the  whole  tedious  process 


40  JIM 

was  again  to  be  gone  through.  Annoyance  followed 
upon  delay  and  fresh  delay  upon  annoyance. 
Schultz,  said  Edith,  made  Charley  and  her  and  the 
detective — the  latter  procured  during  the  Leishman 
reign — do  all  the  work;  the  lawyer  showed  a  strong 
dislike  to  originating  anything;  he  would  not  listen 
to  the  suggestions  from  legal  short-cuts  that  Vana- 
man  picked  up  from  club-gossip  and  brought  to  him, 
and  Edith  complained  that  she  had  never  heard  of  an 
attorney  so  anxious  to  force  his  employers  to  do  the 
unclean  work  for  him.  Once  he  openly  expressed 
mistrust  of  their  evidence  and  asked  for  fresh.  He 
recommended  another  detective  agency  which  was, 
he  said,  more  trustworthy  than  the  Canarde;  advised 
that  this  agency  report  direct  to  him  after  watching 
Jim,  and,  when  the  report  showed  Edith's  husband 
to  be  behaving  with  an  innocence  that  Edith  de 
clared  was  assumed  only  to  give  them  trouble, 
Schultz  flew  into  a  rage  and  threatened  to  wash  his 
hands  of  the  whole  affair.  Edith's  tears  were  all 
that  softened  him. 

So  the  hot  Summer  crawled  along.  Edith  refused 
to  leave  town:  she  wanted,  she  explained,  "  to  be  on 
the  spot,"  and  she  expected  Charley  to  be  there,  too. 
Not  that  it  helped.  They  passed  breathless  after 
noons  in  the  apartments  where  she  was  living,  talking 
it  over  and  over,  swinging  about  a  weary  circle,  and 
sticky  evenings  at  roof-gardens,  trying  to  devise 
means  to  hurry  the  tardy  engine  of  the  law.  Jim,  it 
appeared,  would  keep  his  word.  Only  once,  when 
he  happened  to  hear  he  was  to  be  charged  with  in 
famies  that  would  be  supererogatory,  he  threatened, 
so  his  lawyer  wrote,  to  enter  a  cross-suit,  but  this 


JIM  41 

was  no  more  than  entered  before  the  tearful  repent 
ances  of  his  wife  engaged  its  withdrawal.  The 
newspapers,  too,  had  been  successfully  eluded.  But 
practical  progress  limped. 

At  last,  however,  the  ear  of  a  court  was  gained, 
a  referee  appointed  and  the  testimony  that  Leish- 
man  had  "  built  up  "  was  taken.  Edith  gave  her 
evidence.  Charley  gave  his.  The  detective  fol 
lowed.  The  unessential  details  were  hazarded;  the 
opposition  was  merely  formal.  The  decree  nisi  was 
granted,  and  now  it  was  expected  that  the  decree 
would  be  made  absolute  some  time  during  this 
October  day. 

§  3.  Once  in  his  clothes,  Charley  descended  the 
stairs  softly.  He  wanted  to  pass  unobserved  the 
door  of  his  father's  room;  but  the  floor  of  the  land 
ing  creaked  under  his  sluggish  tread  and  the  door 
was  opened.  His  sister  had  detected  him. 

"  Charley,"  said  she. 

She  spoke  in  the  commanding  whisper  of  ama 
teur  nurses.  The  dim  light  of  the  stairway 
showed  her  to  be  a  dumpy  woman  with  an  empty 
spectacled  face  and  too  many  years  for  the  likelihood 
of  marriage.  Her  myopic  eyes  were  round  with  a 
serious  vacancy.  Her  mouth  was  patient.  She  be 
longed  to  the  unhappy  type  that  is  dismissed  with  the 
postscript:  "But  she  is  good."  Mame  had  never 
been  anything  but  a  useful  drudge  in  the  Vanaman 
household.  Charley  loved  her,  but  he  considered 
her  a  cipher. 

"  Charley,"  she  repeated.  She  put  out  a  plump 
hand. 


42  JIM 

Her  brother  brushed  the  hand  away. 

"  Let  me  go,  Mame,"  he  said:  "  I'm  in  a  hurry." 

"  But  Charley,"  she  pleaded,  "  you're  never  going 
without  saying  '  Good-morning '  to  poppa.  He  had 
a  very  bad  night.  Dr.  Morley's  just  left." 

Charley  gave  one  of  his  short  chuckles. 

"Had  a  bad  night,  did  he?  Well,  so  did  I." 
He  really  did  not  feel  like  chuckling,  still  less  like 
visiting  the  sick:  he  wanted  a  bracer  and  a  massage 
— and  Edith  was  waiting. 

"Oh,  Charley!" 

In  the  grip  of  that  argument,  Vanaman  twisted  his 
body  as  a  wayward  lad  wriggles  when  the  school 
mistress  substitutes  gentle  persuasion  for  the  right 
eous  rod. 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  said,  "  I'm  sorry.  I  don't  want 
him  to  be  sick,  but  I  am  in  a  hurry,  and " 

"  He  wants  to  see  you,"  said  Mame  Vanaman. 
"He's  been  asking  for  you  these  two  hours,  but  I 
didn't  want  to  wake  you  up." 

"  All  right,"  said  Charley,  resignedly.  He  really 
was  sorry  for  his  father,  but  he  really  was  in  a 
hurry,  too.  "  I'll  come  in;  only,  mind  you,  it's  just 
a  moment."  He  started  to  pass  her  and  then  no 
ticed  that  she  made  a  movement  in  the  opposite 
direction.  "  Where  are  you  going?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  was  going  downstairs,"  said  Mame,  timidly. 
"  I  couldn't  leave  poppa  alone,  but  now  you  were 
going  in  I  thought  I  might  telephone  Mrs.  Hamil 
ton.  I  wanted  to  tell  her  that  I  couldn't  go  to  the 
missionary  meeting  to-night,  poppa  being  so  sick." 

"  Oh,"  said  Charley.  Mame's  sole  dissipation 
was  her  church's  missionary-society:  the  family  tol- 


JIM  43 

erated  so  much.     "  All  right;  but  don't  be  long.    Is 
that  the  newspaper  you've  got  there?" 

Mame  was  holding  something  in  her  left  hand. 
She  seemed  to  be  trying  to  conceal  it  behind  her  back. 

"  Yes,"  she  said. 

"Any  news?  " 

"  N-no.     Nothing  much.     There's " 

Charley  had  been  fearing  the  papers.  Mame's 
manner  renewed  his  fears. 

"  There's  something  in  it  you  don't  want  me  to 
see.  What  is  it?  " 

Mame  had  a  certain  gentle  craft,  but  she  never 
rebelled  against  established  authority. 

"  Oh,  Charley,"  she  said,  "  it's  just  a  few  lines 
away  in  the  back.  Nobody'll  notice  it." 

Her  brother  seized  the  paper. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  he  urged.    "  What  is  it?  " 

"  It  just  says  that  Mrs.  Trent  has  been  trying  to 
get  a  divorce.  It's  only  a  couple  of  lines,  but,  oh, 
Charley,  isn't  it  awful?  " 

The  veins  stood  out  on  Charley's  forehead.  In 
the  dim  light  of  the  landing  his  eyes  ran  over  the 
fluttering  pages  of  the  paper. 

"Where  is  it?    Where  is  it?    Is  that  all  it  said?  " 

"  Yes,  that's  all.    Just  that." 

"No  names?  It  don't  print  the  names  of  any 
of  the  witnesses?  " 

"  No;  it  says  the  evidence  won't  be  made  public. 
Really,  Charley,  do  you  think  we  ought  to  leave 
poppa  alone  so  long?  " 

"Where  is  the  thing?  Confound  it,  Mame,  can't 
you  show  me?  " 

She  anxiously  showed  it  him.    It  was,  as  she  said, 


44  JIM 

a  mere  statement  to  the  effect  that  the  suit,  the  testi 
mony  in  which  had  been  impounded,  would  prob 
ably  result  to-day  in  the  entry  of  the  final  decree. 
Nevertheless,  Charley  did  not  like  it. 

"  Did  poppa  see  this?  "  he  inquired. 

"  I — He  read  the  paper.  Dr.  Morley  said  he  was 
well  enough  for  that." 

"  But," — her  brother's  index-finger  struck  the  of 
fending  piece  of  news — "did  he  see  this?  That's 
what  I  want  to  know." 

11  Yes,  I  think  so." 

"  You  think  so !  Don't  you  know  ?  Did  he  say 
anything  about  it?  " 

"  No,  Charley,  really  he  didn't." 

Charley  had  not  been  on  a  witness-stand  for 
nothing.  He  pressed  his  point. 

"What  did  he  say?" 

"  He  didn't  say  anything." 

"You're  sure?" 

"Well" — Mame  wavered;  she  genuinely  wanted 
to  save  her  brother  from  pain  and  she  knew  he 
was  at  least  a  friend  of  Mrs.  Trent — "  he  did  say 
something  about  divorce  in  general.  I  forget  just 
what  it  was;  but  you  know  he  don't  approve  of  di 
vorce,  Charley." 

Charley  groaned  at  these  weak  evasions. 

"  Go  and  telephone  your  Mrs.  Hamilton,"  he  said. 

He  saw  her  start  downstairs  toward  the  tele 
phone  in  the  hall.  Then  he  opened  the  door  of  the 
first-floor  front  bedroom  and  went  in. 

§  4.  When  the  family,  at  Charley's  proposal, 
had  moved  to  New  York  after  Mrs.  Vanaman's 


JIM  45 

death,  and  bought  the  house  in  Lexington  Avenue, 
its  head  furnished  the  entire  place,  and  especially 
this  bedroom,  as  much  as  was  possible  with  the  furni 
ture,  and  after  the  manner,  of  the  house  in  Carmel 
in  which  old  Vanaman  had  lived  while  making  his 
fortune  and  from  which  he  never  ceased  to  regret  his 
departure.  Now,  as  with  a  new  vision,  Charley  saw 
the  room,  and  he  hated  it.  He  saw  the  mahogany 
washstand  with  a  marble  top,  the  mahogany  bureau 
with  a  marble  top,  the  marble  mantel-piece,  and  he 
saw  the  high  mahogany  bed  in  which  his  father 
lay. 

The  old  man  was  covered  to  the  chin,  his  long, 
gray  beard  resting  outside  the  blanket  that  Mame 
had  tucked  about  him  with  mathematical  precision. 
His  large  head  was  quite  bald,  and  the  skin,  drawn 
tight  over  his  high  cheek-bones  and  beak  nose,  was 
yellow.  He  lay  still,  but  the  eyes  that,  under  the 
bushy  brows  of  iron  gray,  sought  Charley's  were 
black  and  keen. 

"  Good-morning,"  said  Charley,  with  a  sturdily 
evoked  cheerfulness.  He  came  to  the  foot  of  the 
bed  and  stood  there  irresolutely.  "  Mame  said  you 
didn't  have  a  good  night,  but  you're  looking  fine." 

The  elder  Vanaman's  mouth  tightened. 

"Don't  lie  to  me,"  he  answered;  his  voice  was 
firm,  calm.  "  I'm  not  looking  fine — an'  no  more, 
are  you." 

"  Oh,  I'm  all  right."  Charley  shifted  his  weight 
from  one  foot  to  the  other.  "  A  little  indigestion, 
that's  all.  Had  grouse  for  dinner,  and  I  ate 

"  Ate! "  The  word  was  accusation.  "  How's 
your  invention  comin'  on?" 


46  JIM 

Charley  brightened. 

"  If  you'll  only  put  up  the  money  I  asked  you 
about—  "  he  began. 

"Seen  Mrs.  Trent  lately?" 

"  I — no •"  The  son's  cheeks  became  brick 

red.  "  I  wish  you'd  let  me  explain  about  her." 

"  I  don't  need  explanations,"  the  old  man  an 
swered.  "  What  I  want  is  actions.  I  told  you  not 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  her.  I  know  what 
she  is." 

"  She's  a  lady!  "  Charley's  protest  was  dutifully 
loyal  to  Edith. 

"  She's  a  married  woman,"  said  his  father,  quietly. 
"  I  won't  have  you  runnin'  around  with  married 
women." 

To  forestall  parental  reference  to  the  newspaper 
paragraph,  u  She's  getting  a  divorce,"  said  Charley. 

The  old  man's  mouth  worked. 

"  I  know  that,  too,"  said  he,  "  an'  I  guess  you 
knew  it  long  ago.  I  guess  you  wouldn't  'a'  told  me 
if  you  didn't  know  it  was  in  the  papers.  Well, 
there's  only  one  thing  worse  than  a  married  woman, 
and  that's  a  woman  who's  divorced." 

"  What  else  could  she  do?  "  Charley  pleaded.  A 
summer  at  law  had  made  him  as  bitter  as  the  law 
makes  most  people.  "  Her  husband  was  a  brute." 

"  So  she  says,"  muttered  the  father. 

"  He  didn't  deny  it.    He  didn't  give  evidence." 

"  Maybe  he  was  too  much  of  a  man,  Charley." 

"  He's  too  much  something  else.  He  did  begin 
a  cross-suit,  and  he  had  to  drop  it." 

Under  the  covers  the  old  man's  feet  fidgeted. 

"  He  named  you  in  it.     Oh,  I  don't  get  all  my 


JIM  47 

news  out  o'  the  newspapers.  I  hear  a  little  o'  what's 
goin'  on,  even  if  I  am  bed-ridden." 

This  must  be  Zoller's  work.  Inwardly,  Charley 
cursed  Zoller.  He  wondered  how  much  the  lawyer 
had  told,  but  knew  that  to  ask  either  Zoller  or  the 
elder  Vanaman  would  be  to  invite  further  trouble. 

"  But  I  tell  you  he  dropped  it.  He  hadn't  any 
evidence.  Besides " 

"  Charley,"  said  the  father,  "  you  can't  talk  this 
way  to  me.  I've  lived  too  long.  I  know  what  lies 
a  woman  can  threaten  to  tell,  and  if  she's  good- 
lookin'  they're  worse  ones.  When  she  does  threaten 
to  tell  'em,  it  isn't  only  a  matter  o'  no  evidence  that'll 
make  a  man  drop  his  cross-suit.  Now,  don't  let  me 
hear  any  more  about  it;  you  keep  away  from  that 
woman  or  you  don't  get  another  cent  out  o'  me." 

He  had  said  it  often  before;  now  he  said  it  with 
an  air  of  fearsome  finality.  When  Charley  was 
afraid  he  grew  angry.  Moreover,  he  was  in  love; 
he  knew  both  the  need  of  money  and  the  fact  that 
Edith  would  be  properly  displeased  if  he  were  late 
for  his  appointment  with  her. 

"Why?"  he  demanded. 

"  Because  she's  a  bad  lot,"  said  the  father. 

The  son's  eyes  glared.  "  She's  the  best  woman  in 
the  world!  "  he  affirmed. 

His  tone  betrayed  him.  His  father's  sharp  gaze 
read  the  younger  man's  mind. 

"  Don't  tell  me  you  want  to  marry  her!  " 

Charley's  lungs  seemed  to  collapse.  He  had  to 
wait  a  perceptible  moment  before,  still  forgetting 
discretion,  he  could  cry: 

"  You   don't  understand !     You're  too  old-fash- 


48  JIM 

ioned.  You  can't  see  that  the  world's  grown  any 
since  you  were  young.  If  you'd  only  take  the  trou 
ble  to  listen  to  the  evidence  in  the  Trent  case; 
if- 

His  father  drew  a  slow  arm  from  beneath 
the  bedclothes.  He  shook  a  skinny  forefinger  at 
his  son. 

"  Charley,"  he  said,  "  Dr.  Morley  says  I've  got 
to  have  quiet.  You'd  better  go.  But  if  you  marry 
that  woman,  I  won't  leave  you  a  cent,  so  help  me 
God  I" 


FOURTH  CHAPTER 

SOMEWHERE,  in  starlit  space,  are  there 
stars  that  are  both  brown  and  bright?  Char 
ley,  who  was  in  most  matters  no  poet,  always 
asked  himself  that  question  when  he  thought  of 
Edith  Trent's  eyes.  To  say  merely  that  they  were 
brown  was  to  say  so  little  of  them  as  to  say  almost 
nothing  at  all;  they  were  like  stars,  and  yet  they 
were  like  no  stars  he  had  ever  seen. 

He  often  wondered  how  he  could  describe  her. 
He  had  been  called  upon  a  hundred  times  to  de 
scribe  the  complicated  improvement  for  the  tele 
graphic  sounder  that  he  had  invented,  and  in  this 
he  could  always  make  himself  clear.  But  Edith — 
there  his  powers  of  description  failed.  She  was  tall 
and  dark;  the  lines  of  her  lips  were  generous;  the 
curve  of  her  breast  awakened  his  memories  of  boy- 
read  mythology  and  the  stories  of  goddesses  that 
walked  the  earth  and  condescended  to  the  loves  of 
men.  At  such  times  he  thought  of  her  as  a  woman 
with  the  body  of  Aphrodite  and  the  face  of  Artemis. 
He  thought  of  her  forehead  as  broad  and  low,  of 
her  lips  as  passionate  and  firm;  much  as  Homer 
thought  of  the  dawn,  Charley  thought  of  the  pink 
wave  that  would  climb  from  Edith's  shoulder  to 
her  cheek.  But  of  her  eyes  he  always  thought  as  of 
stars. 

With  his  father's  threat  hammering  at  his  heart, 
how  was  he  to  face  them  now?  To  succeed  with 

49 


50  JIM 

Edith  and  to  succeed  with  his  invention — that  was 
all  the  success  he  asked:  why  should  it  be  denied 
him?  He  could  not  believe  that  all  life  was  against 
him.  Some  way  out  there  must  be. 

The  drink  and  the  massage  gave  him  courage; 
they  propped  his  shaken  power  of  decision.  His 
father?  Well,  there  was  no  help  for  it:  he  must 
keep  his  father  in  ignorance  of  his  marriage  to 
Edith ;  so  long  as  old  Vanaman  knew  nothing  of  that, 
he  would  take  no  step  to  divert  his  property  from  his 
son.  And  Edith?  Charley  dared  not  tell  her  out 
right  what  had  happened — at  least  not  just  yet.  He 
did  not  want  to  lie  to  her,  but  she  had  had  so  much 
to  vex  her  lately:  he  must  not  give  her  more.  Be 
sides,  he  knew  something  of  her  abhorrence  of  fail 
ure:  of  course,  she  would  not  throw  him  over,  but 
she  might  want  him  to  wait  until  the  sounder  had  so 
thoroughly  redeemed  its  promises  that  they  would 
not  need  his  father's  money — and  the  law  had  al 
ready  strained  Charley's  endurance  to  its  breaking- 
point.  No,  he  would  now  only  prepare  Edith,  tell 
her  only  in  part;  he  would  break  the  rest  of  the  news 
to  her  after  their  marriage.  Edith  was  a  practical 
woman:  she  would  understand  the  need  of  secrecy. 
She  loved  him:  knowing  that  love  alone  had 
prompted  it,  she  would  forgive  his  deception. 

Again  he  fell  to  thinking  of  her  as  Artemis  and 
Aphrodite. 

§  2.  When  he  entered  the  living-room  of  her 
apartment-Olympus — she  had  moved  all  the  way 
across  town  from  Jim's  address — he  found  await 
ing  him  a  wrathful  goddess. 


JIM  51 

"You're  late,"  said  Edith.  "Where  on  earth 
have  you  been  all  this  time?" 

Charley  had  one  of  his  rare  moments  of  inspira 
tion. 

"That's  just  it,"  he  said:  "I've  been  on  earth, 
and  it's  a  long  way  from  earth  to  heaven." 

His  eyes  sought  her  hungrily.  She  had  not  risen 
from  the  pillow-heaped  couch  on  which  she  was  lying 
when  he  let  himself  into  the  apartments  with  the  key 
that,  when  she  rented  them,  she  had  given  him. 
The  long  folds  of  a  canary-colored  negligee — 
Edith  continued  to  be  particular  about  her  clothes 
— clung  eagerly  to  her  body.  It  showed  the  lines  he 
loved,  for  petticoats  had  ceased  to  be  the  fashion;  it 
gave  view,  as  she  lay  there,  of  her  lithe  ankles  cased 
in  silk  stockings  of  the  same  shade,  and  of  her 
crossed  little  feet  in  high-heeled  slippers  to  match. 
The  negligee  fell  far  away  from  the  base  of  her 
throat;  and,  framing  the  oval  of  her  dark  face,  hung 
the  black  strands  of  her  alluringly  disordered  hair. 

With  movements  too  rapid  for  a  man  of  his  bulk, 
Charley  put  his  hat  and  overcoat  on  the  nearest 
chair  and  crossed  to  her.  He  sat  on  the  edge  of  the 
couch.  He  had  none  of  the  graces  of  the  perfect 
lover,  but  he  had  energy  and  earnestness.  Almost 
roughly  he  forced  an  arm  about  her  waist  and  drew 
her  head  to  his  shoulder.  He  seized  her  hand. 

"Edith!"  he  whispered. 

He  tried  to  raise  her  head  toward  his,  but  she 
held  back,  so  he  lowered  it  until  it  rested  on  his 
elbow.  Thus  he  sat  for  a  moment,  looking  into 
the  stars  that  were  her  eyes. 

"  Edith!  "  he  whispered  again. 


52  JIM 

And  their  lips  met  in  a  rapturous  kiss. 

But  the  kiss  ended  abruptly. 

"  What's  the  matter?  "  he  asked.  He  sat  upright 
now. 

She  shook  the  wonderful  masses  of  her  hair. 

"  Nothing." 

"  Something's  wrong,  I  know." 

"  Well,"  she  pouted,  "  I  told  you  you  were  late." 

"  I  overslept." 

'  You  drank  too  much  last  night,"  said  Edith, 
composedly.  "  And  you've  had  more  this  morning." 

"  How  could  I  help  it?  "  He  did  not  like  criti 
cism,  even  from  a  quiet  goddess,  and  his  tone  seemed 
now  to  imply  that  the  fault  of  his  intemperance  lay 
at  her  door.  "  This  thing's  got  so  on  my  nerves  that 
I've  got  to  do  something." 

"Your  nerves?"  She  raised  her  level  brows. 
"What  do  you  think  it  must  do  to  mine?" 

"  I  know;  but  you  drank  your  share." 

"  My  share  didn't  go  to  my  head." 

Charley  repeated  that  petulant  wriggling  of  the 
shoulders  with  which  he  had  met  his  sister's  appeal. 

"  It  was  Jim  taught  me  to  drink,"  he  said.  "  He's 
the  cold-blooded  kind  that  never  take  too  much.  He 
pretends  he  thinks  everybody  else  is  as  slow  as  he  is. 
Sometimes  I  half  believe  he  taught  me  so  as  to  get 
square  with  me. — People  say  he  isn't  drinking  a  bit 
now." 

The  mention  of  the  absent  man  seemed  to  drop  a 
veil  between  the  lovers,  who  were  yet  as  much  bound 
together  by  their  common  hatred  of  that  man  as  they 
were  by  their  passion  for  each  other.  They  drew 
unconsciously  apart. 


JIM  53 

"  If  people  do  say  it,"  declared  Edith,  "  they're 
not  telling  the  truth." 

Charley  had  begun  by  postponing  speech  of  what 
was  uppermost  in  his  mind.  Jim,  however,  was  no 
sooner  mentioned  than  other  topics  vanished  before 
him. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that."  Vanaman  shook  his 
round  head.  "  It  would  be  just  like  his  devilish- 
ness  to  quit  for  good."  He  reflected  on  this. 
"  Jim'll  want  to  show  that  we  lied." 

"  Nobody  will  believe  him,  no  matter  what  he 
does,"  Edith  quietly  interrupted.  "  There  is  the 
testimony  that  he  hardly  denied,  and,  anyhow,  peo 
ple  always  believe  a  woman.  All  we  have  to  do  is 
be  careful." 

Charley  heaved  the  heavy  sigh  of  one  that  makes 
a  supreme  sacrifice. 

u  All  right,"  he  said,  smacking  his  knee  with 
his  fat  hand.  "  I'll  just  promise  you  one  thing: 
from  the  minute  you  get  your  decree,  I'll  never  take 
another  drink." 

"  Nothing?  "  she  inquired. 

"  Well,  not  whisky,  anyhow;  only  a  glass  of  beer 
now  and  then,  and  perhaps  a  little  white  wine  with 
my  dinner."  He  thought  he  saw  a  cloud  of  doubt 
dim  the  brightness  of  her  eyes.  "  I  mean  it,"  he 
affirmed.  "  You  just  wait  and  see." 

Edith  had  drawn  a  pillow  away  from  him  when 
they  began  to  speak  of  her  husband.  Now  she  put 
it  behind  her  and  sat  in  the  center  of  the  couch.  She 
did  not  comment  on  his  declaration. 

"You  believe  me,  don't  you?"  asked  Vanaman. 

"  Oh,   I  suppose  so,"   said  Edith.     Her  fingers 


54  JIM 

were  busy  with   an   invisible   spot   on   her  canary 
negligee,  and  her  eyes  followed  her  lingers. 

Charley  tried  to  take  her  hand. 

"You'll  promise  the  same?"  he  urged. 

"I?  Why  should  I?  "  Her  gaze  met  him  fairly, 
but  her  hand  retreated  and  escaped.  "  I  never  take 
too  much." 

u  I  know,  dear,  but  you  might  sometime." 

"  I'm  too  careful — even  if  I'm  not  cold-blooded." 

"  You  can't  tell.  I  used  to  think  I  was  careful. 
And  when  we're  married — well,  you  never  know 
what  it'll  lead  you  to." 

Edith  smiled  a  world-old  smile. 

"  I  know  what  it  led  you  to,"  she  said.  "  That 
first  evening,  when  Jim  was  out  of  town,  if  you 
hadn't  had  one  drink  more  than  you  needed,  you 
wouldn't  have  had  the  courage  to  say  what  you 
did." 

"  No,"  chuckled  Charley;  "  and  every  time  you 
went  on  the  witness-stand " 

"Are  you  sorry  for  that?"  she  challenged. 

"  Are  you  sorry  I  said  what  I  did  on  that  first 
evening?"  he  countered. 

He  bent  toward  her,  but  her  eyes  caught  the  desk- 
telephone  that  stood  on  a  table  beside  the  wall  oppo 
site  them. 

"  Why  doesn't  Schultz  send  us  word?  "  she  asked. 

§  3.  The  morning — for  it  was  indeed  late  when 
Charley  arrived — had  been  trying  to  Edith  for 
more  reasons  than  one.  Now  that  the  long  strain 
of  the  suit  was  nearing  its  end,  she  felt  supersti- 
tiously  afraid  of  telephoning  Schultz  for  news.  She 


JIM  55 

had  arranged  with  Charley,  on  the  night  previous, 
to  call  the  lawyer  before  noon,  and  Schultz  was 
now  to  call  her  apartments  the  moment  the  decree 
was  signed.  The  shorter  the  wait  grew,  the  severer 
it  became.  She  had  risen  early,  bought  all  the 
morning  papers — she  had  an  especial  reason  for 
looking  at  them  to-day-— and  then,  disappointed  at 
what  she  found  there,  she  went  for  a  nervous  walk  to 
pass  the  time  until  that  fixed  for  a  word  from 
Charley. 

Perhaps  because  she  was  missing  her  old  walks  in 
the  Park,  she  went  in  that  direction.  She  had  a  hor 
ror  of  encountering  Jim,  but  she  knew  that  he  would 
be  at  his  easel  at  this  hour,  making  the  most  of  the 
morning  light.  The  person  she  did  encounter  was 
Mrs.  Dunbar,  the  former  Jean  Dent  of  Ayton 
and  the  present  wife  of  the  broker  with  a  family  in 
Madison  Avenue.  It  was  their  first  meeting  since 
Edith  had  left  Jim. 

Edith's  sensations  were  new  to  her  and  disquiet 
ing.  She  saw  Mrs.  Dunbar  before  that  lady  raised 
her  eyes,  and  the  petitioner  in  divorce  found  herself 
strangely  unstable  of  purpose.  Did  Mrs.  Dunbar 
read  the  papers?  And  if  she  did,  would  she  care? 
Madison  Avenue,  as  represented  in  the  woman  that 
was  once  Jean  Dent,  stood  for  a  factor  that  Edith, 
although  she  knew  it  now  to  be  tremendous,  had  not 
counted  on.  To  be  sure,  the  Madison  Avenues  of 
this  world  have  divorces  of  their  own  and  to  spare; 
but  it  is  one  thing  to  have  a  skeleton  in  your  own  cup 
board,  or  even  to  be  aware  that  your  friends  have 
one  in  theirs,  and  quite  another  to  open  your  draw 
ing-room  to  someone  that  does  not  as  yet  quite 


56  JIM 

belong  there  and  presents  herself  at  your  door  with 
her  family-skeleton  freshly  strapped  to  her  back  for 
all  folk  to  see.  Edith  would  rather  have  liked  to 
get  into  that  parlor;  not,  of  course,  to  stay  there, 
but  to  be  able  occasionally  to  come  and  go.  Here 
and  now  the  issue  might  be  determined.  Without 
any  conscious  doubt  of  the  righteousness  of  her  posi 
tion,  Edith  wanted  to  run  away. 

"  Why,  Edith  Trent!  "  Mrs.  Dunbar  spoke  at  the 
moment  when  Jim's  wife  turned  to  cross  the  street. 
"  I  am  glad  to  see  you!  " 

The  tone  was  a  little  patronizing,  but  Mrs.  Dun- 
bar's  tone  had  been  that  from  the  day  when  she 
ceased  to  be  Jean  Dent.  Her  round,  red  face  was 
pleasant.  Edith  could  have  fallen  in  her  arms  and 
wept. 

"  Mrs. — Jean!  You're  back  in  town?  " 

"  Yes.  We  got  here  only  yesterday.  We  stayed 
at  Seal  Harbor  till  there  wasn't  another  soul  but 
ourselves  left  in  the  place.  How  are  you  and  where 
have  you  been  for  the  Summer?  " 

("  Does  she  know?  "  Edith  was  thinking.  "  Does 
she  know  and  not  care,  or  hasn't  she  heard  yet?  ") 

Aloud  she  said: 

"  I  didn't  go  much  of  anywhere,  except  for  a  day 

or  two  now  and  then.  There  was  business  that 

And  it's  been  so  dreadfully  hot  in  town." 

"  So  they  tell  me.  They  say  it  was  better  than 
Turkish  baths.  I  think  I'll  have  to  stay  in  New 
York  some  Summer  to  reduce  my  weight.  What  a 
brute  your  husband  is,  to  be  sure,  keeping  you  here 
just  because  of  his  business.  I  thought  artists  could 
paint  anywhere." 


JIM  57 

Edith  opened  her  lips  to  tell  the  truth,  but  what 
came  from  them  was  a  flow  of  nothings  about 
August  weather  in  the  city.  She  was  trying  to  divert 
Mrs.  Dunbar's  attention  from  Jim. 

She  did  divert  it.  They  talked  safely  for  quite 
five  minutes  and  parted  as  they  had  met.  Edith  felt 
herself  clinging  to  this  woman — more  than  that:  try 
ing  to  commit  her  to  a  friendship  that  could  survive 
the  news  of  the  divorce;  and  when  Mrs.  Dunbar  at 
last  withdrew,  Edith  half  believed  that  she  had  suc 
ceeded.  She  was  grateful  and  jubilant.  She  was 
so  jubilant  that,  presently  finding  in  her  path  the 
apartment-house  that  she  had  lived  in  with  Jim  and 
that  Jim  still  lived  in,  she  walked  by  it  as  if  she  were 
the  Children  of  Israel  circling  doomed  Jericho. 

Effie  Mitchell,  who  was  once  suspected  of  being 
not  quite  all  that  she  should  be,  was  coming  out  of 
the  door.  The  Summer  had  worked  changes  in 
Effie  that  raised  suspicions  to  certainties.  Her 
cheeks,  which  had  always  been  bright,  were  now  far 
too  bright  for  a  morning;  and  her  hair,  which  had 
once  been  yellow,  was  now  the  red  of  the  prevailing 
fashion. 

Edith,  as  she  saw  the  girl's  face  brighten  with 
glad  recognition  and  forgetfulness  of  past  snubs, 
felt  a  twinge  of  pity.  There  was  in  that  look  a 
pathos  all  the  more  poignant  because  it  was  uncon 
scious.  But  Edith  had  just  triumphed;  she  had  noth 
ing  in  common  with  this  thing  that  Effie  Mitchell 
had  so  patently  become.  There  had  never  been  a 
time  when  she  did  not  scorn  it,  and  to-day  she  scorned 
it  more  than  ever.  Besides,  she  was  at  present  in 
a  position  in  which  she  must  be  especially  careful. 


58  JIM 

People  that  did  not  know  the  facts  were  anxious  to 
misinterpret  anything  they  chanced  to  see,  and  peo 
ple  like  the  Dunbars  would  not  care  to  know  people 
that  knew  people  like  Effie. 

"Mrs.  Trent?"  said  Effie. 

But  Edith  pretended  not  to  hear. 

She  went  back  to  her  apartments  and  changed 
to  her  negligee,  but  she  could  not  change  her  frame 
of  mind  and  she  was  not  wholly  satisfied  with  her 
self.  After  all,  she  had  seen  Effie  only  from  the 
corner  of  her  eye:  perhaps  Effie  thought  that  she 
had  not  been  seen  at  all.  Edith  hoped  so.  How 
could  anybody  expect  to  be  recognized  under  such  a 
ridiculous  alteration  of  hair?  And  yet 

Edith  lay  down  on  the  couch  in  the  living-room 
and  vainly  tried  to  find  something  of  interest  in 
the  newspapers  that  were  heaped  there.  What  she 
found,  and  what  she  fascinatedly  read,  was  the  re 
port  of  a  sermon  by  the  only  preacher  she  admired: 
a  sermon  by  Bishop  Peel  denouncing  divorce.  It 
was  impossible  for  an  unworldly  clergy  to  under 
stand  such  matters!  Edith  choked  on  a  wrathful 
sob.  She  threw  down  the  paper. 

She  watched  the  clock  on  the  mantel-piece.  It 
ticked  so  fast  and  so  loud,  and  yet  its  hands  moved 
so  slowly.  Its  regular  sounds  were  like  steady  ham 
mer-taps  upon  her  brain.  When  the  door-bell  rang, 
she  thought  at  first  that  it  was  the  telephone.  Diana 
Wentworth  was  calling — an  epidemic  of  whooping- 
cough  in  the  neighborhood,  she  cheerfully  said,  had 
temporarily  closed  the  branch  of  the  library  in  which 
she  was  employed — and  Edith  absent-mindedly  ad 
mitted  her  without  realizing  that  a  visit  would  prob- 


JIM  59 

ably  be  a  fresh  annoyance,  and  that  Diana  must  be 
got  rid  of  before  Charley  let  himself  in  with  his  tell 
tale  latch-key.  All  the  gods  of  irritation  appeared 
to  be  conspiring  against  her:  it  was  an  unendurable 
morning. 

Diana  sat  down  with  a  gentle  sigh  and  the  full 
tokens  of  remaining.  Her  gown  was  voluminous 
and  velvet.  Her  violet  eyes  animated  her  pale, 
handsome  face.  She  had  met  Edith  in  a  department- 
store  a  week  or  two  ago  and  was  given  this  address. 

'  You've  been  reading  the  capitalistic  news 
papers,"  she  said,  shaking  her  head  in  sad  improba- 
tion. 

"  There's  nothing  in  them,"  returned  Edith, 
viciously. 

"  There  never  is,"  said  Diana.  "  Didn't  you 
know  that  all  their  news  is  personally  censored  by 
Wall  Street?" 

Edith  had  a  vision  of  Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan  prun 
ing  galley-proofs  in  the  secrecy  of  his  own  home  at 
one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  It  was  a  brief  vision; 
it  could  not  be  more,  because  she  was  too  busy  won 
dering  how  to  get  rid  of  Diana  before  Charley  ar 
rived. 

"  They  print  the  most  absurd  things,"  she  said, 
"  and  leave  out  all  the  real  news  that  anybody  does 
give  them." 

She  was  thinking  of  that  column-long  report  of 
the  sermon  by  Bishop  Peel  and  of  something  that, 
in  her  opinion,  should  have  taken  the  sermon's  place. 
For  an  instant  she  was  stopped  short  of  the  men 
tion  of  these  matters — stopped  by  the  same  fear 
of  her  acquaintances'  opinion  of  her  suit  that  had 


6o  JIM 

made  her  want  to  run  away  from  Mrs.  Dunbar.  She 
thanked  Heaven  that  Diana  did  not  read  the  papers, 
and  then  she  realized  that,  sooner  or  later,  Diana 
must  know  at  least  the  bare  truth. 

"How's  Jim?"  Diana  was  asking. 

Quite  calmly  Edith's  mood  changed:  she  would 
tell  it  now.  Here  was  a  way  of  getting  rid  of  her 
visitor — a  desperate  way,  perhaps,  but  she  was  over 
come  by  a  temporary  disgust  of  deception.  Let 
Diana  hear  and  flee. 

"  I  don't  know  how  he  is,"  said  Edith,  tragically. 
"  He  doesn't  live  here.  I — I'm  going  to  divorce 
him." 

The  result  was  not  what  she  had  looked  for. 
Diana  leaned  forward,  her  hands  clasped,  her  violet 
eyes  alight. 

"  How  splendid  of  you !  "  she  gasped. 

Edith  gasped  in  echo. 

"What?    You  don't "    Then  she  thought  she 

saw  a  light.     "  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  a  wife's  al 
ways  the  last  to  hear  anything  about  her  husband. 
I  suppose  you've  known  things  about  him  for  ever 
so  long." 
She  was  once  more  mistaken. 

"  N-no,"  said  Diana.  "  I  never  heard  anything 
of  that  sort,  but  I  could  see  that  he  was  the  Conven 
tional  Type  of  husband,  and  the  Conventional  Type 
of  husband  is  a  tyrant.  He  has  no  Feeling  for  Free 
dom." 

So  it  became  clear.  Diana  was  for  Freedom; 
hence  Diana  was  for  Divorce.  The  merits  of  no 
particular  case  concerned  her,  nor  the  means.  She 
placed  everybody  that  she  knew  in  what  she  called 


JIM  6 1 

a  Type,  and  Jim  belonged  to  a  Type  that  Diana  dis 
approved  of;  but  that  mattered  little  where  so  great 
a  principle  as  Divorce  was  concerned:  had  he  been 
all  that  she  admired,  she  would  still  have  applauded 
Edith's  action — one  must  demonstrate  one's  Prin 
ciples;  even  at  some  slight  personal  inconvenience,  it 
is  each  individual's  duty  to  make  some  sort  of  Pro 
test  against  the  unendurable  might  of  Convention. 
Divorce  was  a  Popular  Right,  and  Diana  believed 
in  helping  along  the  progress  of  the  Greatest-good- 
for-the-greatest  number.  Doubtless  she  had  often 
said  such  things  before  in  Edith's  hearing,  but  be 
fore  Edith  never  heeded  them  because  they  seemed 
unlikely  ever  to  apply  to  her.  The  present  applica 
tion  gave  them  an  intimate  interest. 

"That's  what  he  was,"  said  Edith:  "  a— What 
do  you  call  it?  He  had  no — no " 

"  Feeling  for  Freedom,"  breathed  Diana.  "  I 
know  the  type." 

"  No  Feeling  for  Freedom,"  Edith  repeated. 
"  That's  it.  He  used  to  pretend  to  let  me  do  what 
I  wanted,  and  then,  when  it  got  me  in  any  trouble, 
he'd  pretend  to  be  sweetly  magnanimous.  The  way 
he  wouldn't  say  it  was  my  own  fault  simple  shrieked, 
*  I  told  you  so ! '  " 

"  Of  course.  I  know  them  so  well.  He  was  en 
tirely  wrapped  up  in  his  own  work,  wasn't  he  ?  They 
all  are." 

"  Jim  never  thought  of  anything  else.  He  said  he 
couldn't  afford  to.  And  such  a  thing  to  think  about! 
If  he'd  only  been  in  business !  Why,  he  worked  him 
self  half  to  death,  and  could  only  make  just  enough 
for  us  to  get  along  on." 


62  JIM 

'  Without  any  interest  in  your  work,"  Diana 
nodded. 

Edith  was  in  full  swing  now.  Five  minutes  ago, 
she  had  been  punctuating  her  sentences  by  glances  at 
the  clock,  but  now  the  injuries  done  her  by  Jim 
blotted  out  the  memory  of  Charley. 

"  No  interest  at  all  in  what  I  cared  for,"  she  said. 
"  Of  course,  I  hadn't  any  work  but  the  housework. 
My  father  was  a  business-man,  and  we  weren't  the 
sort  of  people  that  have  to  teach  their  daughters  a 
trade.  Sometimes  I  wish  I  had  one." 

"  Housework  is  drudgery,"  Diana  declared.  She 
had  settled  back  in  her  chair  to  enjoy  in  greater 
comfort  the  story  of  Edith's  wrongs.  She  added: 
"  Even  in  an  apartment  and  with  a  maid." 

"  And  he  wouldn't  play  cards,"  pursued  Edith, 
"  or  dance.  He  wouldn't  do  anything  at  all — for 
me.  He'd  hardly  ever  go  anywhere  with  me  in  the 
evenings — not  even  to  the  theater — because  he  said 
he  had  to  be  up  early  to  use  the  morning  light  for 
his  painting." 

She  ran  on  at  length.  She  went  through  the  cata 
logue  of  her  woes.  "  And  all  this  Summer,"  she  con 
cluded,  "  he's  been  leading  a  perfectly  immaculate 
life — do  you  know  why?  Simply  to  make  it  harder 
for  me  to  get  evidence." 

'  That's  so  like  them,"  smiled  Diana.  "  And  of 
course  with  these  silly  man-made  laws  that  we  have, 
you  do  have  to  get  evidence,  don't  you?  Well,  the 
time  will  come  when  we'll  change  all  that.  A  woman 
will  have  the  Right  to  her  own  soul.  When  a  wife 
wants  to  leave  her  Slavery,  she  will  do  it  by  what 


JIM  63 

Archibald  Hodge  calls  the  Divine  Prerogative  of 
Womanhood." 

Edith  did  not  follow  this,  but  the  name  of  its  au 
thor  caught  her  ear. 

"Who  is  Archibald  Hodge?"  she  asked. 

She  could  not  have  asked  anything,  it  immedi 
ately  appeared,  that  Diana  more  delighted  to  an 
swer.  Her  face  was  transfigured  as  she  told  of 
Hodge. 

He  was  the  Splendid  Type.  With  a  glorious 
body  he  combined  an  intellect  that  was  as  Mt. 
Everest  among  foothills.  "  He  is  so  thoroughly 
emancipated,"  said  Diana,  "  that  his  mind  is  posi 
tively — positively  naked."  Hodge  had  simplified 
Simplified  Spelling.  He  had  passed  upward  through 
Socialism  to  Anarchism  and  thence  to  a  political 
economy  of  his  own  making:  the  Hyper-individual 
ism.  He  had  made  a  synthesis  of  Bergson  and 
Eucken,  added  to  it  the  Vital  Principle  that  these 
two  philosophers  so  conspicuously  lacked,  and  called 
it  Hodgeism.  Those  were  his  lesser  achievements. 
As  you  cared  to  look  at  it,  he  threw  them  off  by  the 
way  or  hewed  them  as  foundation-stones  for  his 
Great  Work.  His  Great  Work  was  the  confutation 
of  mere  Feminism  and  the  creation  of  his  own 
system  to  which  he  had  given  the  simple  name  of 
Womanism. 

"  Womanism,"  Diana  explained,  "  is — well,  it  is 
the  Absolute  Freedom  of  Woman.  It  recognizes 
that  Woman,  as  the  Life-Giver,  should  be  the  Life- 
Ruler." 

"  Yes,"  said  Edith,  a  trifle  vaguely.  "  But  what 
does  he  do?  " 


64  JIM 

"  He  preaches  his  Gospel,"  said  Diana. 

"Oh!     He  has  money  of  his  own?" 

Hodge  had  not.  He  was  one  of  the  lilies  of  the 
radical  field.  How  did  he  live?  His  friends  were 
only  too  glad  to  support  him.  They  were  support 
ing  him  while  he  wrote  his  Great  Work — in  twenty 
volumes.  When  he  had  written  it,  they  themselves 
would  publish  it.  Sylvia  Tytus  had  started  the  sub 
scription  :  she  was  the  secretary  of  the  Radical  Club. 
Edith  ought  to  come  around  to  the  Radical  Club; 
it  was  a  wonderful  place  for  the  exchange  of  ideas. 

"  And  Sylvia,"  said  Diana,  "  is  just  one  of  the 
finest  types  of  woman  that  ever  lived.  She  has  the 
clearest  soul  I  ever  knew.  There's  nothing  that  she 
hasn't  done  or  wouldn't  do.  She  is  simply  a  pure 
diamond  that  reflects  the  light  of  every  known  emo 
tion  and  yet  remains  its  untainted  self.  She's  a 
splendid  speaker,  and  she's  radiantly  beautiful." 

Edith's  attention  began  to  wander  and  her 
thoughts  to  return  to  the  tardy  Charley;  but  Diana 
ran  on,  telling  how  the  Womanist  League,  under 
the  direction  of  Hodge  and  Sylvia  Tytus,  was  launch 
ing  the  propaganda  that  was  to  convert  the  world 
and  set  up  Woman  as  the  earth's  ruler.  Her  prac 
tical  hostess  came  back  to  herself,  only  to  ask  how 
long  would  be  required  for  the  conversion. 

Diana  looked  about  her  as  if  suspecting  Philistine 
eavesdroppers.  She  lowered  her  voice  to  a  dis 
couraged  whisper. 

'  There  are  times,"  she  confessed,  "  when  I  feel 
afraid  it  will  take  years/'  She  shook  her  head. 
'  Years,"  she  repeated,  sadly.  "  But,  of  course, 
we  never  mention  that  to  Him." 


JIM  65 

She  did  not  want  to  talk  about  this.  Intentions 
were  far  more  interesting  to  her,  and  to  them  she 
glibly  reverted. 

Edith  was  glad,  now,  that  Charley  was  late:  the 
later  he  was,  the  less  chance  there  would  be  of 
Diana  meeting  him  and  guessing  their  intimacy.  She 
was  roused  by  another  word  of  her  visitor. 

" .  .  .  the  barbarism  of  the  married-state," 
Diana  was  saying.  "  There  will  be  no  marriage  in 
Our  World." 

"  You  don't  mean  that  you  won't  marry?  " 

"  Only  free  unions,"  said  Diana,  "  terminable  at 
the  desire  of  either  party." 

"  But,"  said  Edith,  "  that's— why,  that's  what  they 
call  Free  Love !  " 

"  Exactly." 

Edith  was  shocked. 

"  I  think,"  she  said,  sharply,  "  that  that's  simply 
disgusting." 

Diana  tried  to  be  tolerant;  she  tried  to  explain. 
Freedom,  she  said,  was  the  essence  of  Love,  and 
Love  was  the  essence  of  Freedom. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  Edith  asked,  "  that 
if  you  were  married  to  a  man 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  I  wouldn't  marry!  " 

"  Well,  then,  living  with  a  man."  Edith  loathed 
the  phrase.  "  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  if  you 
were  living  with  a  man,  you  would  let  him  be  in 
love  with  other  women?" 

"  I  should  scorn  to  shackle  him,"  said  Diana. 
"  And,  as  for  what  it  meant  to  myself,  it  would  be 
a  test  of  my  Type,  a  proof  of  my  Emancipation." 

It  was  what  the  actors  call  "  a  good  exit-line,"  and 


66  JIM 

Diana,  to  Edith's  relief,  used  it  as  her  departing 
word. 

When  her  guest  had  gone,  the  hostess  gathered 
up  the  newspapers  and  looked  at  the  clock.  Charley 
was  very  late.  She  was  no  longer  glad  that  he  was 
late:  she  was  angry.  She  was  angry  at  Diana,  too, 
for  thinking  that  love  was  a  minor  passion  and  less 
than  holy;  yet  she  was  also  angry  because  a  man  of 
whom  she  had  thought  so  highly  as  she  had  thought 
of  Bishop  Peel  could  utter  a  sweeping  condemnation 
of  all  divorce. 

§  4.  And  now,  to  Charley  beside  her,  she  was  re 
peating: 

"Why  doesn't  Schultz  send  us  word?" 

Charley,  bending  to  kiss  her,  checked  himself. 

"  I  suppose,"  he  said,  "  the  judge  hasn't  handed 
down  the  decree  yet." 

The  white  knuckles  of  Edith's  right  hand  tapped 
the  back  of  the  couch  impatiently.  She  made  an 
obvious  effort  at  self-control. 

"  How  is  your  father  this  morning?  " 

"Not  so  well:  he  had  a  bad  night." 

"  I'm  sorry." 

"  Yes."  Charley  spoke  in  his  dual  role  of  the 
sympathetic  son  and  the  man  of  the  world.  "  But 
of  course  he'll  never  be  any  better." 

Edith  caught  her  breath. 

"How  can  you  talk  that  way?  Your  own  fa 
ther!"' 

Above  everything  else,  she  feared  death.  She 
regarded  it  as  the  greatest  evil.  It  was  so  terrible 
that  she  could  not  wish  it  even  for  Jim. 


JIM  67 

"  Well,"  said  Charley,  "  that's  the  fact,  anyhow. 
Dr.  Morley  hasn't  told  Mame  yet,  but  he  admitted 
it  to  me  yesterday.  I  don't  want  him  to  die;  I'd  do 
anything  I  could  to  save  him,  only  there  isn't  any 
thing  to  be  done."  It  was  the  moment  to  say  so 
much  as  must  be  said:  "  He  don't  like  you,  Edith." 

Edith's  beautiful  eyes  showed  her  pain. 

"  I  know,"  she  said.  "  I  did  my  best,  but  he  never 
cared  much  about  me.  I  must  try  again,  that's  all. 
I  hope,"  she  quickly  added,  "  it  hasn't  turned  him 
against  you?  " 

"  Would  it "  Charley  gulped  at  the  lump  in 

his  throat.  He  looked  at  her  in  high  appeal.  He 
would  venture  the  hypothetical  question.  "  Would 
it  matter  to  you,  dear,  if  he  did  turn  against  me?  " 

It  was  Edith  who  now  made  the  advance.  She 
put  out  a  hand  and  lightly  touched  his  cheek. 

"You  silly  boy!  Of  course  it  wouldn't.  But  he 
won't  turn — and  we  do  have  to  have  some  money  to 
live  on,  don't  we?  " 

Charley  understood  her.  Before  his  memory 
there  flashed  the  picture  of  that  first-floor  bedroom 
of  the  house  in  Lexington  Avenue:  the  mahogany 
washstand  and  bureau,  the  marble  mantel-piece,  the 
big  bed  and  the  bald,  yellow  man  with  the  beak  nose 
and  the  keen  gray  eyes,  that  lay  there.  Charley  was 
in  love  and  so  he  lied  freely. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  it  hasn't  set  him  against  me, 
anyhow.  Three-fourths  of  the  estate,  you  know, 
go  to  me  under  the  present  will,  and  there's  no  chance 
of  a  change."  The  chance,  he  reflected,  really  was 
small:  he  had  only  to  keep  his  secret  from  his  fa 
ther.  A  little  more  preparation  of  Edith's  mind 


68  JIM 

for  what  he  meant  to  tell  her  after  their  marriage 
was,  however,  necessary,  and  so  he  went  on :  "  The 
way  he  happened  to  speak  about  you  was — Did  you 
see  the  papers  this  morning?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Edith. 

'  Then  you  saw — Didn't  you  see  what  was  in  them 
about  the  suit?  " 

"  Yes." 

Charley's  mind  dodged  from  its  consideration  of 
effects  to  a  complaint  against  their  cause. 

"  It  was  rotten  luck.  I  don't  see  why  that  had 
to  happen.  I  don't  see  how  they  ever  got  hold  of 
it.  We'd  all  been  so  careful." 

"  I  gave  it  to  the  papers,"  said  Edith,  coolly. 

His  arm  fell  away  from  her. 

"You — Edith,  what  are  you  talking  about?" 

"  I  did,"  she  said.  She  looked  at  him  belligerently. 
"  I  was  sick  and  tired  of  everybody  thinking  Jim 
such  a  saint  and  me — the  other  thing." 

Charley  was  overcome.    He  could  only  stutter: 

"  W-why,  how  could  they  think  anything  about 
the  case  when  they  hadn't  heard  of  it?  " 

"They'll  have  to  know  sometime,  won't  they?" 

"  Yes,  but  not  now." 

"  I  don't  care.  I  wanted  to  be  the  first  to  talk. 
I  wanted  people  to  know  what  Jim  really  is.  I 
couldn't  stand  it  any  longer.  So  I  called  up  the 
papers  on  the  telephone.  It  was  last  night  after 
you  brought  me  home."  Her  wrath  weakened. 
"  Why  didn't  you  stay  the  way  you  used  to?  I  asked 
you  to  stay.  If  you'd  stayed,  I  wouldn't  have  done 

it.  But  I  was  lonely  and  I  got  to  thinking " 

She  surrendered  to  a  sob.  "  And  the  horrid  things 


JIM  69 

wouldn't  print  a  line  except  just  to  say  that  there 
was  a  suit  for  divorce !  Not  one  fact  against  Jim — 
not  one.  He  must  have  fixed  them  all  long  ago.  He 
thinks  of  everything;  he  has  friends  on  all  the  papers. 
He'd  say  he  did  it  to  save  me  from  publicity!  " 

Tears  had  her  now.  She  was  crying  on  Charley's 
shoulder,  and  Charley  thought  of  nothing  but  some 
means  to  comfort  her. 

He  patted  her  hands;  he  stroked  her  hair. 

"  It's  all  right,"  he  murmured.  "  It  don't  matter. 
We'll  let  them  all  know  some  day.  It's  all  right. 
It  didn't  do  any  harm;  really,  it  didn't." 

Edith  did  not  raise  her  head,  but  her  sense  of  the 
practical  was  reasserting  itself. 

"  He  didn't  think  I  was  awful — your  father,  I 
mean?"  she  asked. 

"  Oh,  he's  just  old-fashioned.     It'll  be  all  right." 

"  But  there's  Mame.  She  might  see  this  was  her 
chance." 

Charley's  chuckle  was  honest: 

"  Mame?  You  don't  know  Mame.  She's  all  for 
me.  Mame  don't  count." 

Edith  clutched  his  hands. 

"  Are  you  sure?  Are  you  sure  your  father  won't 
turn  against  you,  Charley?" 

What  else  could  he  seem  to  be?  "Of  course  I 
am,"  he  said.  "  I've  got  a  scheme.  It'll  be  all 
right."  He  was  trembling;  he  wished  that  he  dared 
to  ask  for  a  drink.  "  Just  you  wait.  You'll  see. 
And,  anyhow,  there's  always  the  sounder." 

"  But  you  said  yesterday  it  had  been  so  hard  to 
get  the  right  people  about  that;  and  you  said  we 
needed  money  in  the  meantime." 


yo  JIM 

'  We'll  get  the  money.  I  tell  you  I  have  a  scheme 
to  fix  poppa.  We'll  interest  capital  in  no  time  now. 
Then  we'll  be  more  than  well-to-do:  we'll  be  rich. 
I  remember  once  when  I  was  working  in  the  gov 
ernment  telegraph  office  in  Peking " 

He  believed  in  his  sounder.  He  believed  that, 
even  should  his  father  live  long  enough  to  discover 
the  necessity  of  carrying  out  the  threat  of  a  new 
will,  that  sounder  would  save  the  day.  But  he  would 
not  now  have  dared  to  make  matters  clear  to  Edith; 
he  wanted  to  be  sure  of  her,  and  his  love  for  her  was 
of  such  a  sort  that  the  more  he  loved  the  less  certain 
of  her  he  could  be.  So  he  fell  to  diverting  her  at 
tention  by  the  kind  of  narration  that  she  most  en 
joyed:  the  stories  of  adventures  in  the  strange  lands 
in  which,  as  a  wandering  inventor  under  passing 
parental  displeasure,  he  had  spent  five  years  of  his 
life. 

She  listened  to  him,  her  head  raised  again,  but 
her  eyes  were  for  the  telephone.  Her  inner  ear 
sat  alert  for  the  first  tinkle  of  the  bell  that  would 
announce  their  freedom. 

Charley  broke  off  in  the  middle  of  a  description 
of  a  midnight  ride  through  the  Boxer  lines. 

"  But  I  can't  talk  about  that  now,"  he  said. 
"  This  is  too  much  like  waiting  for  the  jury  to 
come  in." 

"The  jury?"  Edith  found  the  simile  ominous. 
"  When  there's  a  jury  there's  some  doubt,  isn't  there? 

But  in  our  case You  don't  mean  that  anything 

might  upset  our  plans?  " 

Charley  was  too  nervous  wholly  to  conceal  his 
fears.  If  he  could  only  have  a  drink! 


JIM  71 

"  N-no,"  he  said.  "  But  it's  always  just  possible 
that,  somehow  or  other,  word  might  get  to  the 
judge— 

"How  can  it?" 

"  It's  not  likely.  But,  you  know,  Edith,  some  of 
these  judges  are  just  old  women;  and  if  this  fellow 
happened  to  learn  that  you  and  I — that  we " 

"  He  can't  learn  that.  Nobody  suspects.  I'm 
called  Mrs.  Trent  here,  but  not  Mrs.  James  Trent. 
Nobody  in  this  house  knows  who  I  am." 

"  Well,  then,  he  might  find  some  flaw  in  the  testi 
mony." 

"  There  isn't  any  flaw  to  find." 

"  Yes,  I  know;  but  maybe  it's  too  flawless.  Some 
times  I  wonder  if  it  isn't  so  flawless  that  it  sounds 
faked." 

Edith's  brows  contracted. 

"  We  had  to  do  that,"  she  protested.  "  Schultz 
himself  said  so.  Over  half  of  it  he  suggested  to 
us  by  his  questions — he  and  Leishman.  It  was  their 
fault.  They  both  were  always  saying  we  couldn't 
win  unless  we  did  swear  to  what  we  did  swear  to. 
You  know,  Charley,  how  they  led  us  on.  We  just 
couldn't  prove  what  was  true,  so  we  had  to  prove 
what  wasn't.  You  don't  suppose '  Her  under- 
lip  trembled.  "Charley!"  she  sobbed. 

Again  he  took  her  into  his  arms  and  comforted 
her.  He  denied  all  the  fears  that  he  had  so  lately 
expressed.  He  kissed  her,  at  first  tenderly  and  then, 
as  her  red  lips  responded,  with  more  and  more 
fervor. 

Of  that  contact  was  born  something  that  banished 
fear.  Fear  was  banished  and  within  them  rose,  beat- 


72  JIM 

ing  in  their  temples  and  tugging  at  their  throats,  the 
passion  that  had  drawn  them  together,  the  desire, 
so  often  temporarily  satisfied  but  never  perma 
nently  satiated,  which,  beginning  in  the  days  when 
Edith  Trent  considered  herself  the  neglected  wife 
of  an  artist  too  much  engrossed  in  his  art,  had 
dragged  the  one  of  them  through  the  divorce  court, 
had  turned  the  other  to  bear  false  witness,  and  had 
brought  them  both  to  this  apartment  and  this  waiting 
for  a  judgment  in  favor  of  all  that  they  had  done. 

Vanaman's  right  arm  was  wound  about  her  waist 
with  a  grip  of  steel;  his  left  was  round  her  firm  neck, 
her  head  was  thrown  against  the  heaped  cushions  of 
the  couch;  her  black  hair  half  veiled  her  glowing 
cheeks,  her  panting  bosom,  her  parted  lips,  her 
burning  eyes.  There  was,  for  them,  no  reason  for 
denial;  for  a  year  and  more  denial  had  been  un 
known  between  them.  Charley  bent  his  face;  his 
mouth  closed  on  hers.  He  held  her  tighter.  He 
drew  back  only  to  gasp  her  name: 

"Edith!" 

A  bell  rang.  It  was  crisp,  clear.  It  was  from 
the  world  that  they  were  forgetting.  It  was  as  if 
the  walls  of  their  room  had  fallen  and  left  these 
lovers  visible  to  all  that  world. 

They  leaped  apart. 

Charley,  in  a  trembling  voice,  swore  an  habitual 
oath.  The  woman  was  more  collected. 

"The  'phone!"  she  said  with  quick  realization. 
14  That's  Schultz." 

She  sprang  up;  but  Charley  was  before  her. 

"  Not  you!  "  she  cried.  "  It  mustn't  be  a  man's 
voice  from  my  rooms." 


JIM  73 

She  was  too  late:  Charley  was  at  the  telephone. 
If  his  hand  had  shaken  when,  a  few  hours  earlier,  he 
began  to  telephone  to  Edith,  it  shook  more  violently 
now;  but  he  lost  no  time. 

"  Hello  !    Hello !    Hello !  "  he  said. 

In  the  little  black  receiver  at  his  ear  the  answer 
danced  and  rattled. 

"Hello!"  said  the  answer.  "Hudson  one-two- 
nine-three?  " 

"  Yes." 

"Mrs.  Trent  there?" 

"  Yes,  yes." 

(Edith  pleaded:  "  Make  him  say  who  he  is," — but 
Charley  did  not  hear  her.) 

"  Ask  her  to  the  'phone,  please." 

"  This  is  Mr.  Vanaman,"  said  Charley  with  what 
dignity  he  could  get  into  his  tone. 

"  Oh !  "  begged  Edith,  but  she  could  say  no  more. 
She  could  not  wrench  the  receiver  from  his  hand. 
She  could  scarcely  breathe  in  this  atmosphere  that 
she  herself  had  charged  with  surveillance  and  decep 
tion. 

The  black  receiver,  however,  was  firm. 

"  I  want  to  talk  to  Mrs.  Trent,"  it  persisted. 

"Who  is  this?  "  asked  Charley. 

"  Mr.  Schultz,  her  lawyer,"  said  the  receiver. 

"Well,  won't  I  do?" 

"  You  will  not.  I  talked  to  you  once  before  this 
morning,  and  that's  enough  for  the  day.  You've  had 
too  much  to  do  with  this  case  already,  Mr.  Vana 
man.  I  want  to  talk  to  my  client,  and  I  won't  talk 
to  anybody  else." 


74  JIM 

Charley  put  his  fat,  pink  palm  over  the  trans 
mitter  and  held  the  receiver  toward  Edith. 

"  It's  Schultz,"  he  said,  his  lips  pale  and  his  voice 
shaking.  "  He  wants  to  talk  to  you." 

Edith  tottered  forward.    She,  too,  was  pale. 

"  Charley,"  she  whispered,  "  it's  not — oh,  you 
don't  think  it's  bad  news?  " 

He  tried  to  say,  "  I  don't  know,"  but,  though  his 
lips  moved,  he  said  nothing. 

Now  she  was  afraid  to  go  to  the  telephone.  What 
did  that  sullen  black  tube  hold  for  her? 

"  Won't  he  talk  to  you,  please?  " 

Charley  shook  his  head. 

She  had  to  take  the  receiver  that  he  held  out  to 
her. 

'  This  is  Mrs.  Trent,  Mr.  Schultz,"  said  she,  and 
a  moment  later  she  was  glad  that  it  was  she  alone 
who  heard  the  form  of  the  lawyer's  answer. 

"  Mrs.  Trent,"  said  the  distant  attorney,  in  a 
slow,  even  tone,  "  I  want  to  say,  first  of  all,  that  I 
took  this  case  because  of  my  friendship  for  your 
dead  father,  and  once  in  it  I  held  on.  This  is  not  my 
sort  of  practice,  and  you  know  it.  If  I  had  not  been 
too  deeply  committed  before  I  knew  where  I  was,  I'd 
have  got  out  of  it  long  ago.  I'd  have  got  out,  any 
how,  if  your  husband  had  fought  the  suit.  Never 
mind  about  my  fee:  I  couldn't  touch  a  penny  of  it. 
Now  that  this  thing  is  over,  I  merely  want  to  tell 
you  that  I  thoroughly  understand  what  you  and  that 
fellow  Vanaman  have  done  to  an  innocent  man — 
thoroughly.  The  court  has  just  signed  your  decree. 
I'm  sending  up  a  certified  copy  by  messenger.  You 
are  a  free  woman.  Good-by." 


JIM  75 

§  5.  For  a  few  seconds  after  the  lawyer  had  rung 
off,  Edith,  paler  still,  stood  with  the  receiver  pressed 
to  her  ear.  It  was  only  slowly  that  indignation  came 
to  her  rescue.  Why,  even  if  the  first  lies  had  begun 
with  them  and  been  amplified  and  improved  by  Leish- 
man,  this  Schultz  had  hinted  that  they  must  continue : 
it  was  an  open  secret  between  them. 

She  hung  up  the  receiver  and  turned  to  her  lover. 

He  was  looking  at  her.  His  wide  mouth  was 
half  open,  and  his  eyes  gaped.  She  had  never  be 
fore  thought  that  he  might  appear  grotesque. 

"  What— what  is  it?  "  he  mumbled.  "  What  did 
he  say?  " 

"  Nothing,"  she  answered,  speaking  calmly  now. 
"  Nothing — except  that  the  decree  has  been  signed — 
and  he  feels  so  under  obligations  to  my  father  that 
he  can't  take  any  money.  We  can  do  what  we've 
been  planning  to  do :  we  can  be  married  quietly  over 
in  Jersey  City  this  afternoon." 

With  a  strident  shout,  he  tottered  toward  her. 
He  opened  his  arms.  She  leaned  to  him,  but,  as  they 
met,  something  seemed  to  have  gone  out  of  them. 
The  kisses  that  the  telephone-bell  had  interrupted 
had  no  repetition.  His  arms,  instead  of  encircling 
her,  drooped,  and  only  his  hands  met  hers.  He 
raised  her  hands  between  his  own.  They  stood  look 
ing  at  each  other.  Slowly  he  lifted  her  fingers  and 
kissed  them.  His  lips  were  cold. 

"  Where's  the  whisky?  "  he  asked.  "  I  think  we 
deserve  just  one  more  drink.  Let's  celebrate  this 
once.  We've  earned  it." 


FIFTH  CHAPTER 

WE  Americans  believe  in  divorce  and  mistrust 
the  divorced.    We  mistrust  them  so  much 
that  it  behooves  a  petitioner  to  place  all 
the  blame  on  the  shoulders  of  the  respondent — if  the 
petitioner  hopes  at  all  to  retain  a  place  in  respect 
able,  middle-class  society. 

Edith  Trent  and  Charley  Vanaman  had  inherited 
neither  enough  wealth  nor  enough  social  position  to 
brave  conventions  and  achieve  the  leisured  walks 
of  American  life.  They  were  conventional  people 
wanting  to  do  conventionally  a  more  or  less  uncon 
ventional  thing.  To  do  it  they  had,  therefore,  tacitly 
recognized  the  necessity  of  a  conspiracy  that  would 
leave  Jim  in  the  position  of  a  brutal  and  libertine 
husband  and  show  Edith  to  the  world  as  a  long- 
suffering  wife  protected  by  a  wholly  chivalrous 
friend. 

They  had  succeeded.  They  had  accomplished  the 
perfect  perjury.  Jim  had  kept  his  word;  and  now, 
with  the  signing  of  the  divorce  decree  in  Edith's 
favor,  Jim,  as  a  real  presence,  should  have  vanished 
from  the  existence  of  his  wife  and  the  lover  of  his 
wife.  A  vindicated  woman,  Edith  was  free  to  go 
where  her  heart  listed;  Charley's  reputation  was, 
at  least  legally,  sustained.  They  were  sincerely,  even 
tremendously,  in  love  with  each  other;  with  no  faith 
in  the  theory — with  no  knowledge  of  it — that  a  suc 
cessful  fraud  cannot  be  a  bond  between  its  per- 

76 


JIM  77 

petrators,  but  must  always  be  a  barrier  because  it  is 
a  fraud,  they  felt  that  they  had  but  to  marry  in  order 
to  accomplish  conventional  happiness. 

And  they  were  married.  They  were  married  on 
the  afternoon  of  the  day  that  brought  the  news 
of  Edith's  freedom.  Somewhat  amazedly,  Charley 
found  himself  borne  off,  by  his  own  desires  as  much 
as  by  Edith's,  to  Jersey  City,  where  they  had  all 
along  planned  to  go  for  the  legalization  of  their 
union.  This  could  escape  the  New  York  newspa 
pers;  Edith  wanted  to  escape  the  New  York  news 
papers  now. 

They  stood  in  a  shabby  little  office  before  a  shabby 
man  at  a  high  desk.  There  were  some  ragged  books 
on  the  desk;  at  one  side  of  it  was  a  railed  space 
and  at  the  other  the  witness-chair;  behind  a  couple 
of  tables  was  a  row  of  benches  discolored  by  a 
generation  of  audiences.  The  wall  decorations  were 
handbills  picturing  wretched  faces  and  offering  re 
wards  for  their  originals:  the  law  promised  to  pay 
well  for  the  chance  of  sending  these  furtive  men  to 
jail.  It  was  a  room  used  for  the  trials  of  petty  of 
fenders,  and  every  morning  it  was  filled  by  drunken 
derelicts,  pickpockets,  and  prostitutes.  The  man  at 
the  desk  had  a  blue  nose  and  the  room  reeked  with 
the  magisterial  odor. 

Here  Edith  and  Charley  were  married.  The  blue- 
nosed  man  asked  them,  in  a  matter-of-fact  voice,  the 
intimate  and  impertinent  questions  prescribed  by 
statute.  Edith  answered  with  burning  cheeks  and 
Charley  with  a  nervous  chuckle.  The  formalities 
concerning  residence  had  been  attended  to  a  week 
since;  the  certified  copy  of  the  divorce-decree  was 


78  JIM 

asked  for,  produced,  and  barely  glanced  at.     One 
or  two  more  questions  were  put  and  answered. 

"  That's  all,"  said  the  man  with  the  blue  nose. 

"Eh?"  said  Charley. 

'  You're  married,"  said  the  blue-nosed  man.    He 
grinned. 

§  2.  They  left  the  magistrate's  office  in  silence. 
To  each  of  them  this  legal  ceremony  had  seemed 
lacking  in  the  dignity  that  their  ceremonial  souls 
and  their  warm  affection  counted  requisite.  Their 
nerves  had,  for  a  long  time,  been  on  an  ugly  strain, 
for  the  details  of  the  divorce  had  been  more  trying, 
the  need  of  falsehood  more  frequent,  than  they  had 
anticipated,  and  now  their  exit  was  not,  they  felt, 
of  the  sort  that  is  generally  supposed  to  be 
hymeneal. 

"  Well,"  said  Edith,  "  that's  settled,  anyhow." 

Charley  nodded,  and  for  a  moment  neither  spoke. 
Then  the  man  looked  at  the  woman,  and,  feeding  on 
her,  his  enthusiasm  revived. 

"  I  think,"  he  chuckled,  as  she  took  his  arm, 
which  bent  to  compress  her  clasping  fingers,  "  we 
ought  to  celebrate  this  somehow.  What  do  you  say 
to  a  bottle  of  champagne — just  one — between  us?  " 

Edith's  reply  was  more  matter-of-fact  than  senti 
mental: 

"  I  think  it  would  do  me  good,"  she  said. 

They  had  it  as  soon  as  they  reached  New  York. 
They  went  to  a  quiet  cafe  on  Sixth  Avenue  and  there 
sat  side  by  side  at  a  little  corner  table.  The  ground- 
floor  room  in  which  they  sat  was  full  of  mirrors, 
but,  save  for  Edith  and  Charley,  the  mirrors  re- 


JIM  79 

fleeted  only  the  figures  of  three  tired  and  inattentive 
waiters. 

Charley  raised  his  glass  and  clinked  it  against 
hers.  Then  he  turned  the  glass  so  that  their  fingers 
touched. 

"Here,"  he  said—  "here's  to  us!" 

Her  eyes  met  his,  and  glowed. 

"  To  us,"  she  softly  echoed. 

"Long  life  and  happiness!"  said  Charley. 

"  And  success!  "  she  added,  smiling.  "  Don't  for 
get  the  success  of  the  invention,  dear." 

He  drained  his  glass;  she  sipped  from  hers.  For 
sometime  they  talked  of  the  indifferent  things  that 
are  so  important  to  lovers.  They  talked  until  the 
bottle  was  empty. 

"  Let's  have  another,"  suggested  Charley. 

"  No,  thank  you." 

"  Aw,  come  on.  Most  fellows  aren't  married  but 
once  in  a  lifetime." 

Edith  winced.  She  knew  that  his  words  had  con 
tained  no  intended  reference  to  her,  but  her  voice 
was  hard  as  she  replied: 

"  I  thought  you  were  going  to  quit  drinking?  " 

"  I  am.     But  to-day- 
It  was  only  her  smile  that  interrupted  him. 

"All  right,"  he  said,  "you'll  see.  Only  I  am 
nervous.  This  is  a  new  thing  to  me." 

How  could  he  stumble  on  such  phrases? 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  have  anything  more  to 
drink,"  she  said. 

She  reverted  to  the  last  subject  of  their  talk, 
and  Charley  did  his  best  to  listen,  but  he  was  indeed 
nervous.  He  fidgeted  in  his  chair. 


8o  JIM 

"  I've  been  thinking,"  said  Edith  at  last,  "  about 
where  we're  going  to  live.  We've  got  to  find  a  place 
in  a  day  or  two.  There's  been  no  time  to  look,  with 
this  suit  going  on,  and  not  much  time  to  talk,  but 
I've  been  thinking." 

"Eh?"  said  Charley.  He  rose.  "Excuse  me  a 
moment,"  he  said. 

He  left  the  room  and  went  into  the  bar,  where 
he  took  a  large  drink  of  Scotch  whiskey,  neat.  He 
was  preparing  to  tell  her  what,  sooner  or  later,  he 
would  have  had  to  tell  her,  but,  since  he  had  all 
along  taken  it  for  granted  that  they  would  live  for 
a  time  at  Edith's  present  apartments,  he  had  still 
hoped  to  postpone  the  date  of  his  disclosure. 

"  Of  course,"  on  his  return  Edith  placidly  con 
tinued,  "  as  I  said  last  week,  I  understand  how  it  is 
that,  just  now,  you  can't  leave  town  because  of  the 
invention,  and  that's  why  I  told  you  I  don't  a  bit 
mind  making  our  wedding  journey  a  stay  at  some 
good  hotel;  but  while  we're  there  I'll  have  to  look 
around  for  some  nice  apartments." 

It  was  characteristic  of  him  not  to  have  reintro- 
duced  this  subject;  it  was  characteristic  of  her  silently 
to  have  reflected  a  great  deal  about  it  and,  assum 
ing  it  her  own  province,  to  have  reintroduced  it  now. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  the  apartments  that 
you  have?  "  asked  Charley.  "  They're  swell  enough, 
aren't  they?  " 

"  Oh,  we  can't  live  there.  I  thought  you  under 
stood  that." 

"What's  wrong  with  the  place?  " 

"Nothing,  dear;  but  everybody  there  has  seen 
you  coming  and  going  since  I  first  moved  in." 


JIM  8 1 

The  reason  was  sufficient,  as  Edith's  reasons  al 
ways  were;  but  it  left  Charley  embarrassed. 

"  We  can't  go  to  poppa's,"  he  said,  a  little  awk 
wardly. 

The  brown  stars  that  were  her  eyes  searched  him 
quickly. 

"  I  wouldn't  think  of  doing  that.  I  always  said  no 
one  man's  house  was  big  enough  to  hold  two  families. 
But  that's  not  your  reason.  What  is  your  reason?  " 

Charley  wriggled.  He  felt  it  was  too  bad  that  a 
difference  should  arise  at  such  a  time,  and  Edith 
agreed  with  him.  Nevertheless,  the  first  fervor  of 
passion  had  preceded  even  the  divorce;  they  were 
not,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  newly-married  people,  and 
this  difficulty,  but  dimly  apprehended  on  the  one  side 
and  quietly  concealed  on  the  other,  had  at  once 
somehow  to  be  resolved. 

"  You  know  well  enough  how  things  are  at  my 
place,"  said  Charley. 

"You  mean  your  father  doesn't  like  me?" 

"  I  mean  he's  old-fashioned  and  prejudiced.  You 
always  understood  how  it  was." 

"  That  was  before  there  was  the — before  I  was 
divorced,  dear — and  it  was  before  we  were  married." 

Charley  laughed  softly: 

"  A  couple  of  hours  ago." 

"  Yes;  but  whatever  your  father  used  to  think  of 
me,  I'm  his  son's  wife  now." 

He  pressed  her  hand.  "  Of  course  you  are — 
forever  and  forever.  But  you've  got  to  remember 
that,  according  to  the  old  man's  notions,  we're  sort 
of  sudden." 

Edith's  manner  did  not  change.     Her  gaze  was 


82  JIM 

steady,  and,  as  she  turned  the  empty  glass  between 
her  fingers,  her  hand  was  steady,  too;  but  her  sensi 
tive  nostrils  dilated  and  her  voice  was  dry  as,  look 
ing  into  his  eyes,  she  said  quietly: 

'  You  haven't  told  him  that  you  meant  to  marry 
me?" 

Here  was  something  she  had  not  expected,  had 
not  understood.  Thoroughly  aware  of  the  elder 
Vanaman's  disapprobation  of  her,  she  was  wholly 
convinced  that  he  would  not  immediately  like  this 
hurried  match.  She  quite  agreed  that  he  had  better 
be  kept  in  ignorance  of  his  son's  project  until  that 
project  was  accomplished;  but  she  counted  on  over 
coming  the  old  man's  prejudice  against  her  by  a  per 
sonal  appeal  after  the  wedding,  and  she  took  it  for 
granted  that  the  opportunity  for  a  personal  appeal 
would  be  given  her. 

Charley  was  saying: 

"  You  know  I  didn't  mean  him  to  know  before 
hand." 

"Yes,"  said  Edith,  "but  it's  not  beforehand 
now.  You  don't  mean  you  were  going  to  try 
to  keep  our  marriage  a  secret  from  your  own 
family?" 

She  could  not  bear  the  infliction  of  the  insult 
implied.  She  was  tired  of  evasions.  It  was  well 
enough,  perhaps,  to  avoid  the  newspapers,  since  Jim 
seemed  to  have  so  many  friends  on  the  newspaper- 
staffs;  in  order  to  avoid  the  newspapers  she  had, 
in  the  quiet  of  her  own  mind,  decided  against 
sending  out  formal  announcements.  But  she  was 
tired  of  purely  unnecessary  evasions.  The  divorce 
had  been  given  to  her,  not  to  Jim;  she  was  a  law- 


JIM  83 

fully  married  woman,  and  she  would  hide  from  no 
more  Mrs.  Dunbars — the  Mrs.  Dunbars  would  ac 
cept  her  only  if  she  were  straightforward  with  them. 
Still  less  would  she  hide  from  Charley's  own  family. 
Oh,  she  could  bring  the  old  man  'round  and  keep 
his  will  intact:  she  could  do  that  better  as  Charley's 
acknowledged  wife  than  Charley  could  do  it  as  a 
supposed  bachelor.  Edith  could  scarcely  believe  that 
her  husband  would  want  to  conceal  his  marriage. 

Charley  continued  to  wriggle  in  his  chair.  Had 
the  moment  indeed  come? 

"  Oh,  Edith,  you  don't  understand — or  rather, 
you  won't.  You  know  perfectly  well  that  we " 

"  How  did  you  think  you  could  hide  it  from 
him?" 

He  was  trying  hard  to  do  what  he  had  meant  to 
do,  trying  hard  to  state  his  terms  and  state  them 
clearly;  but  he  could  not  do  it.  Her  glance  was 
strange :  he  could  not  do  it. 

"  I  wasn't  going  to  hide  it  from  him.  I  wanted 
it  to  be  over  and  done  with  before  I  told  him,  that's 
all.  Don't  you  see?  " 

"  But  you  were  going  to  put  off  telling  him  for  a 
few  days?  You  weren't  going  to  tell  him  right 
away?  " 

"  Oh,  well,  Edith,  you  must  see  for  yourself  that 
if  we  only  waited  till " 

Edith  rose  from  the  table.  Her  eyes  looked  like 
the  brown  agate  marbles  that  he  used  to  play  with 
when  he  was  a  small  boy. 

"  We'll  go  up  and  tell  your  father  now,"  she  said. 


SIXTH  CHAPTER 

A i  they  came  up  the  steps  of  the  Vanaman  house, 
Mame  opened  the  door  for  them. 

"  I  was  listening   for  you,"   she   said  to 
Charley.     "  I  wanted— 

Then  her  near-sighted  eyes  took  in  her  brother's 
companion  and  her  vapid  face  twitched. 

"  You — won't  you  both  come  into  the  parlor?  "  she 
asked. 

She  led  the  way  to  the  dim  room,  furnished  in 
the  style  of  the  Seventies.  Charley,  who  had  had  a 
terrible  ride  uptown — a  silent  ride  during  which  he 
had  failed  in  every  endeavor  to  conjure  the  courage 
requisite  for  facing  Edith's  anger  with  the  facts  in 
his  case — was  rather  glad  of  the  respite,  but  he 
asked: 

"How's  father?" 

Mame  blinked. 

;t  That's  what  I  was  looking  for  you  to  tell  you 

about,"  she  said.     "  He's Again  she  realized 

the  catastrophe  of  Edith's  presence.  She  had  an 
illuminating  flash.  "  You  didn't — you  didn't  want 
to  see  him?"  she  faltered. 

"  Of  course  I  did." 

"  But  he's — he's  very  low,  Charley.  He  had  a 
sort  of  sinking-spell  after  you  left  this  morning." 
The  words  came  with  a  rush  now.  "  Besides,  when 
he  got  a  little  better  he  made  me — I  don't  know  why 
— telephone  for  Mr.  Zoller." 

84 


JIM  85 

"  What!  "  said  Charley.     His  jaw  dropped. 

Brother  and  sister  were  standing,  but  Edith  had 
sat  down  on  the  horsehair  sofa  that  reminded  her  so 
much  of  the  sofa  in  her  Uncle  Morty's  wandering 
parlor  at  Ayton. 

"Who's  Mr.  Zoller?"  she  repeated. 

"  You  know  him:  the  lawyer,"  explained  Charley. 
He  tossed  the  words  over  his  shoulder  at  her.  "  Is 
he  up  there  now,  Mame?" 

Mame  nodded. 

Edith  started  to  rise.  The  situation  was  reveal 
ing  to  her  what  Charlie  had  been  afraid  to  reveal. 

"  Charley "   she  began. 

But  Charley  raised  his  hand. 

"  Just  a  moment,  please,"  he  said.  "  Is  it " 

He  wet  his  dry  lips.  "  Is  it  a  new  will,  Mame?  " 

"  No.  At  least  I  don't  think  it  is,  Charley."  She 
looked  helplessly  from  her  brother  to  Edith.  "  But 
he's  in  no  condition  to  be  interrupted,  whatever  it  is, 

at  least  not  by That  is,  if  you  don't  mind — 

if  Mrs.  Trent  will  excuse  us " 

Edith  got  up.  She  came  a  step  forward  and  put 
out  her  hand.  Her  face  was  kindly. 

"  If  I  can  be  of  any  help,"  she  said,  "  you  must 
give  me  a  chance.  I  am  not  Mrs.  Trent  any  more. 
I  have  been  granted  a  divorce  from  that  terrible 
man,  and  I  am  your  brother's  wife,  my  dear." 

Strong  emotion  is  incapable  of  complete  conceal 
ment.  What  poor  Mame's  face  showed  was  some 
thing  uncommonly  close  to  horror.  Her  features 
seemed  flattened,  as  if  from  a  blow.  Behind  her 
thick  spectacles,  her  pale  eyes  blinked  piteously. 

"  His — you're     married?  "       She     did    not     see 


86  JIM 

Edith's  proffered  hand.  Her  frightened  gaze 
sought  her  brother.  "Oh,  Charley!"  she  whis 
pered. 

Charley  had  fallen  back  at  Edith's  announcement, 
a  not  very  dignified  figure.  Now,  however,  action 
was  forced  on  him.  He  feared  his  father's  disap 
proval,  but  that  silent  ride  uptown  had  taught  him 
to  fear  his  wife's  anger  more.  He  had  to  interfere. 
Besides,  he  really  did  not  want  to  see  the  woman  he 
loved  treated  in  any  but  the  most  cordial  manner. 

"  Of  course  we're  married,"  said  he.  His  tone 
was  not  the  ideally  triumphant  one  in  which  a 
new-made  bridegroom  is  supposed  to  announce  his 
changed  estate,  but  neither  was  it  accompanied  by  the 
sheepish  smile  that,  in  practice,  usually  accompanies 
such  declarations.  His  voice  carried  a  challenge. 

Mame  fairly  swayed. 

"  But,  Charley "  she  protested. 

u  Just  a  moment,  please!  Why  are  you  surprised? 
You  must  have  known  all  along  that  I  intended  to 
do  this."  He  remembered  that  it  always  paid  to 
keep  the  upper  hand  with  Mame.  "  I  made  it  as 
clear  to  you  as  I  could  without — without  saying 
it  in  so  many  words  before  Edith  was  legally  free 
of  the  brute  that  had  been  her  husband.  Mame  " — 
he  looked  at  her  threateningly — "  aren't  you  glad?  " 

Mame  was  ready  for  tears;  but  she  fought 
bravely  with  her  impulse  and  overcame  it.  Mur 
muring  some  platitude  about  her  pleasure,  and  seek 
ing  to  excuse  her  embarrassment  by  a  word  about 
the  suddenness  of  the  news,  she  took  Edith's  hand 
at  last;  she  even  touched  with  her  lips  the  cheek  of 
her  new  sister-in-law. 


JIM  87 

Edith  was  radiant.  She  returned  the  caress 
warmly. 

"  I  love  him,"  she  whispered,  and  she  blushed 
prettily  as  she  whispered  it. 

The  entrance  of  a  maid  saved  Mame  from  imme 
diate  reply. 

"  Mr.  Vanaman's  asking  for  you,  Miss  Vana- 
man,"  said  the  servant.  "  He  wants  you  right 
away." 

Charley  caught  Edith's  eye. 

"Shall  I  go  along?"  he  asked. 

At  that  Mame's  face  grew  utterly  white.  She 
gasped  in  unconcealed  terror. 

"  It  wouldn't  do,"  she  said  as  soon  as  she  was 
sure  that  the  maid  was  out  of  hearing.  "  It'd  be 
the  worst  thing  for  both  of  you.  You  know  you're 
counting  on  his  help  to  finance  the  invention,  and 

if  you  told  him Forgive  me,  Edith,  but  he's 

an  old  man,  and  if  Charley " 

Charley  had  that  easy  bravery  which  comes  with 
the  belief  that  we  have  burned  the  last  of  our  bridges 
behind  us. 

"  I'll  do  what  I  like,"  he  snorted. 

"  No,  no,"  Mame  implored  him.  "  You  know 
how  upset  he  was  by  your  talk  this  morning.  If  he 
saw  you  again,  he  might  have  another  sinking- 
spell." 

"  He's  my  father,"  said  Charley,  doggedly. 

It  was  the  amazing  Edith  who  came  to  Mame's 
rescue.  She  saw  the  practical  danger  and  changed 
her  plans  instantly. 

"  I  think  your  sister  is  right,"  she  declared.  She 
nodded  calmly  to  Mame,  who,  her  victory  shorn  of 


88  JIM 

some  of  its  pleasure  because  it  was  bought  by  an 
other  woman's  influence  over  Charley,  hurried  up 
stairs  and  left  husband  and  wife  together. 

§  2.  Charley's  amazement  kept  him,  for  quite  a 
minute,  speechless.  Essentially  a  timid  man,  he 
had  known,  and  them  but  slightly,  only  a  few  women, 
and  knowing  a  few  women  slightly,  he  of  course  re 
duced  his  scanty  knowledge  to  a  set  of  simple  rules 
and  concluded  that  he  knew  Woman  well.  Here, 
however,  were  all  his  rules  broken — and  by  the 
woman  that  he  had  supposed  he  knew  best  of  all  her 
kind.  Edith,  with  whom  he  had  carried  on  a  long 
liaison,  with  whom  he  had  planned,  and  brought  to 
a  triumphant  issue  under  heavy  difficulties,  a  con 
spiracy  that  the  civil  law  at  best  but  winked  at  and 
that  moral  law  in  which  they  had  been  reared  con 
demned — Edith,  whom  he  had  married,  was  a  mys 
tery.  Here  he  had  reluctantly  come  at  her  bidding. 
Their  entire  future  lay  in  the  balance;  his  father 
might  be  dying.  She  had  ordered  him;  he  had 

obeyed,  and  now He  flung  his  hands  above  his 

head  with  a  gesture  of  fatuous  despair.  When  he 
spoke  it  was  without  thought:  it  was  not  so  much  a 
question  that  he  put  as  it  was  a  picture  of  his  own 
bewilderment  and  of  that  action  of  hers  which  had 
amazed  him: 

"Why  did  you  do  that?" 

"Can't  you  see,  dear?"  she  parried. 

He  was  uncertain  as  to  the  advisability  of  press 
ing  her:  he  had  lately  mastered  the  proverb  about 
sleeping  dogs.  He  was  worried  by  Zoller's  presence 
in  the  house  and,  to  do  him  justice,  by  his  father's 


JIM  89 

relapse.  Nevertheless,  this  seemed  a  time  to  have 
things  out,  so  he  answered: 

"  No,  I  can't  see.  One  minute  you  want  me  to 
come  up  here  and  face  them,  and  the  next  you  hold 
me  off.  I  can't  see  it  at  all." 

If  Edith  needed  anything  to  justify  to  herself  her 
change  of  front — and  she  was  not  a  woman  to  feel 
the  need  of  extraneous  justification — Charley's  words 
were  that  thing.  This  was  not  the  Charley  she  had 
known,  and  only  severe  stress  could  so  have  changed 
him. 

"  It's  because  you've  converted  me  to  your  view," 
she  said.  She  stilled  his  annoyance  by  the  touch  of 
her  slim  hand  upon  his  arm.  u  You  and  your  sister 
and  the  whole  situation  in  this  house.  I  didn't 
realize  it  till  I  got  here.  Somebody  used  to  say  that 
I  never  could  understand  a  stone-wall  until  I  had 
struck  my  head  against  it.  I've  struck  this  stone-wall 
now." 

The  quotation,  or  the  confession  that  it  was  a  quo 
tation,  proved  unfortunate.  Charley's  annoyance 
revived.  It  broke  the  fences  of  his  new  discretion. 

"  Who  used  to  say  that?  "  he  inquired. 

"  Never  mind  who,  dear.  The  point  is  that  it's 
the  truth." 

"  I  suppose  it  was  Jim." 

She  had  not  quoted  Jim;  she  had  quoted  another 
man — a  man  that  Charley  had  not  known.  It  was 
over  the  first  cocktail  she  ever  drank  at  Sherry's 
that  George  Mertcheson  said  it.  She  could  still  have 
recalled  the  glitter  of  the  room — it  and  the  glitter 
of  his  eyes  then  both  so  novel  to  her;  but  she  could 
also  forget  them,  and  she  had  chosen  to  forget. 


90  JIM 

No,  it  was  not  Jim;  but  she  understood  that  to  say 
so  would  entail  explanations. 

"  What  if  it  was  Jim?  "  she  asked.  "  You  don't 
have  to  be  told  what  I  think  of  him." 

"  I  know  I  don't;  but  I'm  sick  and  tired  of  hear 
ing  of  him.  I  don't  want  ever  to  have  to  think  of 
him  again." 

Edith  kissed  her  husband. 

"  You  won't  have  to  think  of  him  ever  again," 
she  promised.  "  And  now  do  try  to  see  why  I  kept 
you  down  here  in  the  parlor.  I  guessed  well  enough 
from  what  your  sister  said  that  you  had  some  little 
quarrel  with  your  father  about  me  this  morning,  and 
I  know  how  much  our  whole  future  depends  on 
keeping  his  good  will.  Oh,  I  know  you  only  de 
ceived  me  to  save  my  feelings  and  I  forgive  you  for 
that.  But  I've  found  it  out  now,  and  so  I  tell  you 
you've  converted  me,  dear,  to  your  opinion  of  what 
we  ought  to  do." 

She  spoke  truly  enough  there.  Brought  face  to 
face  with  the  actual  conditions  of  the  Vanaman  house 
hold — a  household  with  which  she  had  never  been 
intimate,  and  to  which  she  had  been  almost  a  stranger 
since  its  head  began  to  suspect  his  son's  liking  for 
her — she  realized  the  folly  of  the  anger  and  defiance 
that  had  forced  her  to  demand  her  husband's  imme 
diate  acknowledgment  of  her  new  status  to  old  Vana 
man.  Charley  lived  on  the  paternal  allowance;  he 
built  his  future  on  the  expected  success  of  the  tele 
graphic  invention,  and  his  only  present  hope  of 
floating  that  invention  lay  in  a  winning  over  of  his 
father  to  a  faith  in  him  and  the  sounder  equal  to 
his  own  faith.  Something  of  these  facts,  obscured 


JIM  91 

by  the  sanguine  views  of  his  ingenuity  that  are  the 
aura  of  every  inventor,  Charley  had  long  ago  put 
before  her,  but  the  full  extent  of  the  father's  power 
and  the  inability  of  her  charms  to  overcome  his 
prejudices  were  not  brought  home  to  Edith  until  she 
heard  in  Mame's  tones  the  terror  inspired  by  Char 
ley's  implied  determination  to  tell  the  elder  Vanaman 
of  the  marriage. 

Her  new  point  of  view  was  what,  had  he  dared  to 
want  it,  Charley  would  most  have  wanted;  but  it 
had  come  too  suddenly  for  him  to  feel  grateful  for 
it;  he  was  still  numbed  by  the  blows  that  had  pre 
ceded  it.  Charley's  sort  of  man,  when  chance  gives 
him  a  victory,  knows  in  his  heart  that  chance  and  not 
his  own  valor  has  won  him  the  day,  and  so  Charley's 
sort  of  man  is  not  magnanimous. 

"  I  wish  you  could  have  been  converted  sooner," 
grumbled  Charley. 

"How  could  I,  dear?  You  didn't  say  that  he'd 
cut  you  out  of  his  will  if  I — if  we  married." 

"  Oh,  he  won't  cut  me  out  of  his  will  if  I'm  only 
given  a  little  time  to  break  this  to  him  gently,"  said 
Charley.  Since  chance  had  been  so  far  kind,  he  felt 
justified  in  counting  on  it  further. 

"  Then  you  shall  have  the  time,"  Edith  answered: 
she  never  did  things  by  halves.  She  put  her  arms 
about  his  neck.  "  I'll  be  good.  I'll  leave  you  to  go 
up  to  him  when  he's  stronger,  and  I'll  run  along 
and  meet  you  at  Bustanoby's  for  dinner.  My  bag's 
packed  and  can  be  sent  for  from  there.  At  eight 
o'clock,  dear.  Don't  be  late,  but  do  remember  how 
much  depends  on  your  being  nice  to  your  father. 
We'll  keep  it  all  quiet— until  you  can  bring  him 


92  JIM 

'round."  She  guessed  what  that  might  mean,  but 
she  knew  that  rebellion  would  mean  a  new  Vanaman 
will.  She  would  hurry  now;  she  too  would  burn  her 
bridges.  She  added:  "And  find  out,  if  you  can, 
what  he  wanted  to  see  his  lawyer  about." 

She  kissed  him  again  and  left  him.  Charley  saw 
her  to  the  door — which  they  opened  quietly  for  fear 
that  the  sick  man  would  hear  them  and  ask  questions 
of  Mame — and  then,  returning  alone  to  the  gloomy 
parlor,  began  to  pace  up  and  down  the  length  of  the 
room. 

Taking  Edith's  change  at  its  face  value,  as  he 
now  saw  that  he  would  have  perforce  to  take  it, 
the  world,  or  the  world  as  Charley's  tired  brain 
projected  it,  was  still  a  chaos.  Could  he  indeed  keep 
his  marriage  secret?  He  could  not  wish  his  father's 
death,  yet  even  if  Edith  did  not  tire  of  waiting,  there 
were  the  newspapers  and  the  tongues  of  gossip,  to  be 
dreaded:  there  were  all  the  dangers  that  Edith  had 
immediately  seen  and  that  he  had  for  so  long  a  time 
been  blind  to.  He  was  beginning  to  learn  what  most 
of  us  are  as  slow  to  learn:  that  marriage,  in  the  ac 
cepted  sense  of  that  word,  means  the  foundation  of 
one  family  at  the  cost  of  the  disruption  of  another 
and  more  often  two  other  families.  Do  what  he 
would,  it  must  be  his  father  against  Edith.  Mame, 

of  course,  did  not  count,  but  the  others If  Jim 

had  never  come  into  Edith's  life,  everything  would 
have  been  so  easy.  This,  however,  indirectly,  was 
Jim's  work. 

He  had  to  have  a  drink.  Since  the  start  of  his 
father's  illness,  Charley  had  been  keeping  a  bottle 
in  the  dining-room  sideboard.  The  dining-room 


JIM  93 

opened  upon  the  parlor  through  sliding  doors.  He 
tiptoed  out  and  poured  himself  some  whisky — a 
good  deal  of  whisky.  The  first  drink  did  not  at 
once  affect  him,  so  he  took  a  second. 

He  still  had  the  empty  glass  in  his  hand  when  he 
heard  somebody  come  rapidly  down  the  front  stairs 
to  go  out  to  the  street.  Was  it  Zoller?  Charley 
ran  to  the  parlor  window;  but  Mame  had  brought 
from  Carmel  the  habit  of  keeping  the  inner  shutters 
closed:  the  wood  was  warped;  the  shutters  stuck; 
by  the  time  that  Charley  had  them  open  the  person 
that  had  gone  out  was  nowhere  to  be  seen. 

He  crept  to  the  first-floor  landing  and  put  his  ear 
to  the  keyhole  of  the  door  of  his  father's  room. 
There  was  a  buzz  of  three  voices  inside — a  woman's 
and  two  men's.  He  could  distinguish  nothing  more 
than  that.  He  dared  not  go  in.  He  had  to  return 
to  the  parlor  and  walk  and  wait. 

§  3.     Mame  returned  at  last.    She  was  crying. 

"Well?"  demanded  Charley. 

"  He's  only  a  little  better,"  said  Mame.  "  Dr. 
Morley  was  there,  that's  why  they  wanted  me." 

"Was  Zoller  still  with  him?" 

"  He  was  about  just  going  when  I  came  up.  Dr. 
Morley  says — I  asked  him  right  out,  Charley,  for  I 
thought  anything  was  better  than  this  suspense — and 
he  says  he  may  live  several  months — father  may,  I 
mean — but  that  " — her  sobs  shook  her — "  but  that 
it  can't  have  any  end  except — except— 

Charley  Vanaman  bent  and  kissed  his  sister.  Her 
news  was  no  news  to  him,  but  he  had  not  thought 
that  the  doctor  would  break  it  to  her  so  soon. 


94  JIM 

"  I'm  sorry,  Mame,"  he  said;  "  but,  after  all,  it's 
only  what  we've  really  expected.  We  must  just  do 
the  best  we  can  to  make  him  comfortable  in  the 
meantime." 

Mame  looked  up,  mopping  her  reddened  eyes. 

"  If  you  only  hadn't  m-married  at  just  this  time !  " 

'  You  don't  understand,"  said  Charley. 

"  Perhaps  I  don't,  but  you  can  hardly  expect  me 
to  approve  of  her,  Charley." 

His  nerves  would  not  endure  much  more. 

"  You've  got  to  remember,"  he  said,  "  that  Edith 
is  my  wife  now." 

"  I  do.  I'm  going  to  try  to.  I  know  she  has  her 
good  points.  She's  well,  she's  very  well  dressed,  any 
how.  But  Charley,  with  poppa  feeling  about  her 
the  way  he  does,  and  your  invention  not  making 
money,  how  can  you  think 

"Stop  it!"  snapped  Charley. 

She  stopped,  and  he  forced  himself  to  recall  the 
matters  that  were  immediately  pressing.  Presently 
he  asked: 

"  Didn't  you  find  out  what  he  wanted  with 
Zoller?" 

Mame  shook  her  head. 

"  They  wouldn't  let  me  know,  and  afterward,  just 
now,  I  was  afraid  if  I  asked  it  would  excite  him.  Dr. 
Morley  says  particularly  he  mustn't  have  any  ex 
citement.  He  says " 

"  You  haven't  any  idea  what  it  was  about — what 
Zoller  was  here  for,  I  mean?  " 

"  That's  what  I'm  saying,  Charley.  You  know  he 
has  all  poppa's  business  to  attend  to.  It  might  be 


JIM  95 

'most  anything.     Dr.  Morley  says  if  poppa  is  both 
ered  any  more  about  business— 

"  Zoller's  an  old  fox.    I  don't  trust  him." 

Mame  came,  at  this,  as  near  to  indignation  as  her 
brother  had  ever  known  her  to  come: 

'  You   mustn't   say   that,    Charley.      I'm   sure   I 
don't  know  what  poppa  would  do  without  him." 

"  He'd  do  with  me  to  attend  to  his  business  for 
him,  that's  what  he'd  do.  Zoller  came  to  him  with 
some  story  from  some  of  Jim  Trent's  friends,  I 
guess,  and  got  the  old  man  down  on  me.  He  began 
to  change  just  about  the  time  I  began  to  go  to  Jim's 
place." 

"Oh,  Charley,  how  can  you  think  of  all 'these 
things  when  poppa 

That  softened  him. 

"I  know,  Mame,"  he  said,  more  gently;  "we've 
got  to  do  all  we  can  for  poppa  now." 

She  looked  up  at  him  beseechingly. 

"  That's  just  it;  and  if  he  heard  of  your — about 
you  and  Mrs.  Trent— 

u  You  mean  about  Edith.  For  Heaven's  sake,  do 
stop  connecting  her  with  Jim  Trent!  " 

"  About  you  and  Edith,  I  mean,  Charley — if 
father  heard  about  that,  it  would  be  a  shock,  and  the 
doctor  said  that  any  shock  might  kill  him  imme 
diately." 

"  H'm,"  said  Charley.  He  took  a  short  turn  of 
the  room.  When  he  spoke  again,  his  back  was 
toward  her.  "  Do  you  think  you  can  keep  to 
morrow's  papers  away  from  him?  I  guess  the  news 
of  this  wedding's  not  important  enough  to  be  in 
more  than  one  issue  and  they  may  miss  it  altogether 


96  JIM 

—that's  what  we  hope  for,  anyway.  I  was  going 
to  ask  you  to  do  this  before,  only  Edith  thought 
otherwise — until  she  understood  how  really  sick  he 
was,  of  course." 

"  Yes,  I  can  keep  them  from  him.  Oh !  "  —  Mame 
brightened — "will  you  do  it,  Charley?  Your  part, 
I  mean.  Will  you?  " 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  turning  at  last.  "  I  will."  Cir 
cumstances  were  working  together  for  him  again. 
"  I  suppose  I  can  put  in  a  good  deal  of  my  time  here 
— enough  to  keep  poppa  from  suspecting  anything: 
the  way  you  put  it,  it's  my  plain  duty." 

She  came  to  him,  her  myopic  eyes  still  red  from 
tears,  but  her  lips  smiling  gratitude. 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  Charley,  thank  you !  You  are 
good,  and — and,  Charley,  I  will  love  Edith,  and  I 
do  hope  you'll  be  very  happy!  " 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right.  Don't  thank  me.  But  I 
want  you  to  do  something  for  me.  Find  out  if  that 
paper  that  old  Zoller  was  here  about  was  a  new 
will." 

11  I'll  try." 

"  And  if  it  is  a  will,  try  and  find  out  what's  in  it, 
will  you?  " 

She  nodded. 

"  Oh,  and  just  a  moment,  Mame,  can  you  lend  me 
twenty  dollars?  I'll  be  a  little  short  till  to-morrow, 
when  my  allowance  is  due." 


SEVENTH  CHAPTER 

THE  days  that  slowly  lengthened  themselves 
into  months  began  not  unhappily  for  Edith 
Vanaman  and  her  new  husband.  They  had 
long  ago  discounted  the  delicious  surprises  of  a  life 
together  led  by  two  persons  desperately  in  love; 
but,  though  they  had  made  the  mistake  of  choosing 
each  other  for  no  reason  save  that  of  their  passion 
for  each  other,  and  Edith's  passion  for  success,  their 
circumstances  developed  three  interests  that  they 
could  and  did  share  in  common;  they  wanted  to  be 
quit  of  the  memory  of  Jim,  they  wanted  the  inven 
tion  to  prosper,  and  they  wanted  the  elder  Vana- 
man's  money. 

Edith's  surrender  to  the  necessity  of  concealing 
their  marriage  from  Charley's  father  involved,  she 
recognized,  a  postponement  of  those  plans  for  a 
more  expensive  manner  of  life  upon  which  she  had 
confidently  counted.  The  disappointment  was  bit 
ter,  but  she  met  it  resolutely.  Her  only  experience 
in  house-hunting  and  housekeeping  had  been  with  an 
artist  husband,  and  almost  her  only  knowledge  of 
New  York  apartments  was  concerned  with  studio- 
buildings.  Such  a  building  as  that  in  which  she 
had  lived  with  Jim  was  far  too  costly  for  her  pres 
ent  condition;  but  she  had  heard  some  of  his  friends 
speak  of  the  Washington  Square  district  as  cheaper, 
and  there  she  decided  to  engage  rooms  for  herself 

97 


98  JIM 

and  Charley  where  they  might  live  economically  un 
til  riches  came  with  the  exploitation  of  the  sounder, 
the  opportunity  for  her  to  meet  and  soften  the  elder 
Vanaman — or  the  elder  Vanaman's  death. 

Yet  even  the  Washington  Square  district  proved 
unexpectedly  expensive.  The  rents  brazenly  de 
manded  were  out  of  all  honest  proportion  to  the 
comfort  of  the  dark  rooms  shown  her.  She  could  not 
pay  them  if  she  had  wished,  and  she  began  by  scorn 
ing  the  rooms  at  any  price.  She  had  several  dis 
couraging  days  of  interviews  with  landladies  less 
and  less  well-dressed,  showing  rooms  more  and  more 
beneath  her  most  modest  requirements.  In  the  end, 
she  was  compelled  to  engage — only  temporarily,  she 
wa^  sure — what  the  slovenly  proprietor  called  a 
"  third-floor  front  and  back  "  in  a  house  of  grimy 
red  brick  across  Sixth  Avenue  in  Greenwich  Village. 
Trucks,  surface-cars,  and  school-children  made  the 
streets  noisy  from  dawn  until  evening,  and  at  night 
the  trains  on  the  elevated  railroad,  indistinguishable 
from  the  choral  cacophony  of  day,  screeched  and 
thundered  close  to  the  bedroom  windows,  with  a 
horrid  regularity  that  first  deafened  the  quivering 
ear  and  then  left  a  more  painful  silence :  the  waiting 
for  the  next  assault.  The  bedroom  was  narrow  and 
crowded,  and  it  presented  all  those  inducements  for 
quarreling  which  are  offered  by  any  small  space  when 
two  people  try  to  dress  in  it;  but  Edith's  clothes, 
as  a  woman's,  needed  cupboards,  whereas  Charley's, 
as  a  man's,  fared  as  well  in  one  remaining  bureau- 
drawer  as  elsewhere,  even  if  the  bureau-drawer  was 
that  nearest  the  carpet,  stuck  when  it  was  closed, 
and  had  to  be  kicked  shut  every  time  that  it  was 


JIM  99 

opened.  The  living-room  was  in  ungracious  keep 
ing  with  the  bedroom;  but  they  went  out  to  their 
meals  at  supportable  restaurants. 

During  the  better  part  of  November,  husband 
and  wife  were  prey  to  a  fear  that,  unpleasant  as  it 
was,  saved  them  from  boredom;  they  were  afraid 
that  some  word  of  their  marriage  might  get  into  the 
newspapers  and  reach  the  eye  of  the  elder  Vanaman, 
or  that  gossip,  gathering  it  downtown,  would  bear 
it  up.  This  fear,  however,  gradually  passed.  They 
bought  more  papers  than  economy  would  approve, 
but  the  papers  were  silent.  They  were  so  silent  that 
Edith  sometimes  felt  hurt  at  the  apparent  journalis 
tic  assumption  of  her  unimportance.  It  was  Jim's 
work,  of  course :  he  would  still  be  hugging  thaUpre- 
tense  of  saving  her  from  publicity. 

Then,  little  by  little,  the  tedium  of  their  situation 
made  itself  felt.  It  settled  on  their  love  as  Autumn 
weather  settles  on  the  land.  It  was  a  mist,  a  fog,  a 
drizzle;  at  last  it  turned  to  a  monotonous,  discour 
aging  rain.  Charley  had  carried  out  his  plan  of 
saying  to  his  father  that  he  must  sleep  downtown 
so  as  to  be  at  his  office  early  in  the  morning:  he 
passed  half  of  his  working-hours  dictating,  in  that 
office,  letters  that  praised  his  invention  and  peti 
tioned  financiers  for  engagements;  the  other  half 
waiting  in  anterooms,  interviewing  powerless  and 
pompous  subordinates,  accepting  with  a  mask  of 
belief  the  palpable  lies  of  delay.  '  Edith  substituted 
walks  in  Washington  Square  for  her  old  rambles  in 
Central  Park,  dreamed  her  dreams  of  success  at  a 
window  overlooking  that  Greenwich  Village  street, 
waited  and  grew  sick  with  hope  deferred.  In  the 


ioo  JIM 

evenings,  she  and  Charley  would  go  now  to  one 
restaurant  and  now  to  another,  putting  off  as  long 
as  they  could  the  inevitable  return  to  that  cramped 
bedroom;  or  they  would  scurry  up  to  the  gallery  of 
a  theater,  dodging  recognition  by  possible  acquaint 
ances  of  other  days  in  the  better  seats;  or  they  would 
sit  together  in  their  living-room,  with  the  blue  gas 
burning  at  its  highest,  while  Charley  talked  of  his 
adventures  in  China  or  of  the  good  times  soon  to  be. 
And  all  this  while  old  Vanaman  seemed  to  grow  no 
better  and  no  worse. 

Gradually,  therefore,  two  of  their  interests  be 
came  one.  As  time  dragged  on,  they  realized  in 
creasingly  that  the  money  required  to  launch  the 
sounder  was  not  to  be  had  from  without,  and  so  in 
creasingly  that  their  hope  lay  in  Charley's  dying, 
but  slowly  dying,  father.  Thus  the  invention,  which 
had  formed  the  chief  topic  of  their  intimate  conver 
sations,  yielded  to  long  guesses  regarding  old  man 
Vanaman's  inclinations  and  his  will. 

'  You're  sure  he  hasn't  guessed  that  we're  mar 
ried?"  Edith  would  daily  inquire. 

And  Charley  would  daily  answer: 

"  I'm  sure  of  it.  Haven't  I  told  him  I  had  to  live 
away  from  home  because  I  had  to  be  near  my 
work?"  He  would  pause  before  sincerely  adding: 
"  And  you  know  that  I  think  it's  even  a  duty  to  him, 
because,  as  Mame  says,  a  shock  might  kill  him  any 
time." 

Did  Edith  want  her  father-in-law  to  die?  She 
did  not  tell  her  husband  that  this  question  so  much 
as  suggested  itself  to  her,  and  she  was  not  then  sure 
of  its  true  answer.  She,  who  feared  death  above 


JIM  101 

every  other  terror,  she  who  would  not  have  wished 
death  even  for  Jim:  certainly  she  did  not  want  Mr. 
Vanaman  to  die  if  his  will  had  been  changed  to 
Charley's  hurt. 

From  Mame,  now  shut  in  the  house  by  her  fa 
ther's  illness,  Charley  could  discover  nothing. 

"  You  don't  half  try  to  find  out,"  he  upbraided 
her. 

"I  do  so  try,"  she  protested;  "but  I  can't  ask 
poppa  in  so  many  words,  can  I?  You  know  he 
mustn't  be  excited." 

"Then  why  don't  you  try  Zoller?  He  comes 
around  here  every  once  in  a  while,  you  say." 

"He  does;  and  he's  very  nice;  but  he  wouldn't 
talk  to  me  about  such  a  thing — he'd  think  he  had  no 
right  to  talk  to  me  about  a  client's  business  with 
him." 

"  I  wish  he'd  always  been  as  high  and  mighty 
about  such  things.  Look  here,  Mame:  here  I  am 
keeping  my  part  of  your  bargain,  and  you're  not 
keeping  yours.  You  wanted  me  not  to  tell  poppa 
about  my  getting  married,  and  I  haven't  told  him. 
Why  don't  you  keep  your  word  as  well  as  I  keep 
mine?" 

All  that  Mame  could  do  was  to  wipe  the  tears 
from  her  myopic  eyes  and  promise  to  try  again. 
She  tried  often,  but  vainly. 

There  were  moments  when  Charley  thought  of 
softening  his  father's  heart  toward  Edith,  but  all 
his  approaches  from  this  direction  were  as  futile  as 
his  sister's  from  the  other.  In  the  room  with  the 
ugly  mahogany  furniture  the  terrible  old  man  lay, 
all  day  and  all  night  long,  on  the  bed,  his  body  im- 


102  JIM 

perceptibly  weakening,  but  his  eyes  keen,  his  brain 
clear,  his  prejudices  unshaken. 

There  came  a  time  when  Edith  was  annoyed  by 
her  husband's  inability  to  discover  whether  a  new 
will  had  been  drawn.  On  one  or  two  occasions  she 
quarreled  with  him  because  of  this  failure. 

"  Why  don't  you  ask  him?  "  she  demanded. 

"  That'd  only  put  the  idea  in  his  head,"  Charley 
gloomily  assured  her. 

"  Then  can't  you  get  Mame  to  find  out?  " 

"  I've  tried  that.  I've  told  you  I've  tried.  He 
just  won't  say." 

"  And  you  can't  get  him  to  advance  anything?" 

"  Not  beyond  my  regular  allowance.  He  says  he 
doesn't  know  enough  about  telegraphy.  He  says  if 
I  can  interest  some  company  or  some  expert,  he'll 
cough  up." 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  can't  interest  an  expert," 
Edith  would  reply. 

But  despite  business  rebuffs  Charley  continued 
sanguine  of  the  merits  of  his  invention  and  proud  of 
his  abilities  to  convince  anybody  of  anything.  He 
would  try  to  explain  the  intricacies  of  the  telegraphic 
situation  that,  for  the  moment  only,  delayed  suc 
cess.  Edith  listened  but  little  and  based  her  argu 
ment  upon  the  question  of  sheer  merit;  she  either 
could  not  or  would  not  understand.  It  was  a  period 
of  suspense,  and  they  agreed  at  least  upon  one  thing 
concerning  it:  they  silently  agreed  that  it  furnished 
excuse  for  seeking  relief  in  a  postponement  of  the 
time  when  Charley  should  give  up  liquor. 

"If  only  I  could  see  your  father,  I  know  I  could 
bring  him  'round,"  said  Edith. 


JIM  103 

"  I've  done  my  best,"  Charley  declared,  "  and 
he  simply  won't  have  it.  If  I  tried  any  harder,  he'd 
begin  to  suspect,  and  that  would  be  the  end  of  us 
forever." 

The  suspense  was  pulled  to  a  straining  tension. 
Edith  dreaded  the  arrival  of  a  child,  which,  in  their 
present  circumstances,  would  never  do;  she  came  to 
dislike  the  sight  of  babies  in  their  coaches  in  Wash 
ington  Square,  but  she  managed  to  escape  maternity 
and  to  evade  Charley's  patriarchal  tendencies.  For 
the  rest,  Edith  bit  her  lip  and  waited;  Charley,  in 
his  little  downtown  office,  went  on  dictating  verbose 
letters  to  capitalists  and  notes  to  experts,  inviting 
them  to  call  and  test  his  instrument.  The  tasks  of 
both  were  hard;  the  latter's  appeared  so  fruitless 
that  it  began  to  wear  on  even  the  husband's  nerves, 
and  its  failures  more  than  once  sharpened  Edith's 
tongue  to  bitter  criticism. 

''  We  might  save  a  little  money,"  she  said,  "  if 
you  weren't  spending  so  much  on  making  your  office 
look  as  if  you  were  carrying  on  a  big  business." 

"  We  might  save  some,"  he  answered,  "  but  we'd 
never  make  any.  The  only  way  to  begin  to  make 
money  is  to  pretend  to  have  it." 

She  disagreed.  Why  couldn't  he  at  least  dispense 
with  his  stenographer? 

"What?  Fire  Miss  Girodet?  She's  my  best  as 
set.  These  big  financiers  won't  read  a  hand-written 
letter,  or  a  badly  typed  one,  for  that  matter." 

"  But  couldn't  you  rent  desk-room  in  some  other 
man's  office  and  share  his  stenographer's  time  with 
him?" 

"  No,   I  couldn't.     You   don't  understand  these 


io4  JIM 

things,  Edith.  I  tell  you  a  fellow  has  to  put  up  the 
bluff  of  success  if  he  wants  to  succeed." 

He  urged  her  to  come  to  see  his  office,  but  she 
refused  to  go.  She  had  never  been  there.  While 
she  was  Jim's  wife  to  go  would  have  been  indiscreet; 
now  she  had  so  many  worries  at  home  that  she  was 
afraid  to  make  an  expedition  which,  discovering 
tokens  of  failure,  might  add  to  her  burden  a  new 
care. 

Since  Charley  could  not  economize  at  his  office, 
Edith  attempted  further  domestic  retrenchments.  As 
she  had  nothing  to  do  all  day  long,  she  bought  a  gas- 
stove,  had  it  installed,  after  an  argument  with  the 
landlady,  and  prepared  her  own  meals  and  Charley's. 
She  repaired  their  clothes  and  secured  a  slight,  though 
inadequate,  reduction  in  their  rent  by  undertaking 
all  the  work  of  their  two  rooms.  But  these  tasks 
were  distateful  to  her,  and  she  hurried  through  them 
to  gain  a  time  that,  gained,  hung  heavily.  Instinct 
ively,  she  was  avoiding  such  of  her  former  acquaint 
ances  as  she  chanced  to  encounter  in  the  shops  or 
on  the  streets,  for  she  was  ashamed  of  her  poverty 
and  she  felt  that  the  mere  mention  of  Charley's 
name  in  Jim's  dropped  cross-suit  had  by  this  time 
become  known  to  them  and  was  held  against  her. 
One  afternoon  she  went  a  block  out  of  her  way 
to  avoid  approaching  that  prim  Mrs.  Entwhistle 
who  used  to  live  across  the  hall  from  the  apartments 
in  which  Edith  and  Jim  lived.  She  scorned  herself 
for  these  qualms;  she  used  all  her  logic  to  banish 
them:  but  they  remained.  On  a  single  occasion  she 
mentioned  them  to  Charley. 

''  Well,"  he  said — he  had  had  a  particularly  dis- 


JIM  105 

couraging  day  and  was  very  tired — "  it's  not  my 
fault,  is  it?  At  the  start  of  the  whole  thing,  I  told 
you  Jim  might  make  trouble,  but  you  were  sure  he 
never  would." 

After  that  she  abandoned  the  practice  of  bearing 
these  tales  to  him  and  resolved  to  wait  until  the 
triumph  of  the  invention  placed  her,  where  she  now 
was  not,  in  a  position  to  make  new  friends  as  de 
sirable  as  the  old  had  been.  She  even  did  not  tell 
him  when  she  heard  one  of  her  neighbors  in  the  house 
refer  to  her  as  "  that  divorced  woman,"  and  she 
began  to  pass  her  spare  time  in  wandering  upon 
shopping  excursions  during  which  she  did  not  shop 
because  she  had  not  money  and  from  which  she 
returned  miserable  with  the  pangs  of  unsatisfied 
envy. 

Charley's  lot  continued  to  be  little  better.  He  felt, 
as  keenly  as  did  his  wife,  his  unrewarded  business 
endeavors  and  he  kept  to  his  own  heart  several  af 
fronts  that  decreased  the  frequency  of  his  visits  to 
his  club.  He  was  sustained  solely  by  his  confidence 
in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  his  invention. 

"  Let  'em  wait,"  he  would  say  to  himself. 
"  They'll  come  crawling  to  me  on  their  knees  when 
I'm  rich,  and  then  it'll  be  me  that  throws  them  down. 
Money  is  what  talks  in  this  burg:  money  and  noth 
ing  else." 

Edith  noticed  that  the  club  of  which  he  had  been 
so  inordinately  vain  was  playing  less  and  less  part  in 
his  conversation  and  life.  She  had  thought  it  unfair 
that  he  should  have  this  social  outlet  while  she  had 
none,  and  her  only  reason  for  tolerating  it  was  Char 
ley's  proud  announcement,  at  the  start  of  the  di- 


io6  JIM 

vorce-proceedings,  that  Jim  had  resigned  his  mem 
bership.  This  was  a  social  triumph  over  Jim;  be 
sides,  although  Jim  would  say  that  he  resigned 
because  he  did  not  want  to  embarrass  Charley,  it 
would  look  as  if  the  first  husband's  withdrawal  were 
prompted  by  a  guilty  conscience  that  could  not  front 
Edith's  champion.  Now  the  full  effect  of  appear 
ances  had  been  gained. 

"Why  don't  you  give  up  the  club?"  she  asked. 
"  It  would  save  a  good  deal,  wouldn't  it?  " 

"  What?  "—Charley  could  not  credit  her. 

"  Well,  you  hardly  ever  go  there  any  more." 

"  I  wouldn't  give  it  up  if  I  never  went  to  it 
Everybody'd  say  I  was  down  and  out.  You've  got 
to  have  a  club,  even  if  you  don't  use  it  for  anything 
but  to  take  your  business-friends  there." 

"  Jim  resigned." 

Charley  flamed  into  a  rage. 

"Jim,  Jim,  Jim!  Can't  you  ever  get  him  out  of 
your  mind?  Not  for  a  minute?  I  tell  you,  I  won't 
have  you  talk  about  him.  Of  course  he  resigned. 
He's  on  the  toboggan.  I  won't  have  the  fellows  say 
the  same  thing  about  me.  No,  I'm  not  going  to  re 
sign,  and  that's  all  there  is  to  it." 

Generally,  she  ruled  Charley;  but  when  he  broke 
into  these  rages,  he  ruled  her.  Edith  dropped  the 
subject  of  the  club,  and  it  was  not  mentioned  be 
tween  them  until  some  weeks  later,  when  Charley 
told  her  that  Jim  had  been  elected  to  one  that  she 
knew  was  better. 

They  continued  to  wait.  They  saved  money  by 
giving  up  the  theater.  They  were  thrown  entirely 
upon  each  other's  company.  Their  love-makjng  con- 


JIM  107 

tinued,  but  no  man  and  woman  that  ever  lived  can 
pass  every  evening  in  love-making,  and  so  Edith's 
talk  and  Charley's  steadily  strengthened  its  emphasis 
upon  the  financial  possibilities  of  their  future.  Their 
relief  was  alcoholic;  the  whisky  became  increasingly 
necessary. 

At  last  two  things  happened  together:  Charley's 
father,  growing  steadily  weaker,  became  peevish 
because  Charley  did  not  pass  more  time  under  the 
paternal  roof;  and  Charley,  nervously  alert  to  trou 
ble  through  the  worry  that  breeds  worry,  noted 
more  and  more,  and  more  and  more  resented  in  his 
wife's  talk,  certain  words  and  twists  of  phrase  that 
were  undoubtedly  unconscious  reminiscences  of  Jim. 
Weariness  and  policy  combined  to  move  the  hus 
band:  he  passed  two  or  three  nights  of  each  week 
in  his  father's  house,  and  for  these  nights  at  least 
left  Edith  alone. 

That  was  all.  Everything  else  went  on  as  it  had 
gone  on  previously.  The  invention  did  not  prosper; 
the  elder  Vanaman  remained  stingy  and  prejudiced — 
and  alive.  Edith  wanted  Charley  to  turn  his  allow 
ance  over  to  her  uncensored  administration,  as  Jim 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  turning  over  his  earnings; 
but  the  mention  of  that  desire  brought  on  one  of 
Charley's  rages,  in  the  course  of  which  he  told  her 
that  she  was  evidently  trying  to  play  upon  him  the 
tricks  that  she  had  played  upon  his  predecessor. 
They  could  not  save  a  cent;  the  day  came  when  they 
were  in  debt. 

She  kept  it  from  him  as  long  as  she  dared,  but 
she  told  him  at  last,  and  his  reply  was  that  he  could 
not  concern  himself  with  her  affairs.  The  manage- 


io8  JIM 

ment  of  their  domestic  matters  was  her  business;  if 
she  failed  in  that,  how  had  she  the  hardihood  to 
ask  for  the  administration  of  his  whole  allowance? 
He  had  worries  enough  of  his  own. 

There  was  something  in  his  tone  that  gave  her  a 
new  fear. 

"  Charley,"  she  asked,  "  are  you  in  trouble,  too?  " 

They  were  sitting  in  the  front  room  of  their  suite. 
It  was  evening.  The  gas,  burning  full  head,  showed 
cruelly  all  the  cheapness  of  their  surroundings.  Out 
side,  the  light  from  the  street-lamps  cast  a  haze  over 
a  wet  December  street.  Every  little  while  a  scream 
ing  train  on  the  elevated-road  made  it  necessary  for 
husband  and  wife  to  shriek  at  each  other. 

''Trouble?"  said  Charley.  "What  else  have  I 
had  for  months?  " 

"  But  I  mean — I  mean  debt." 

He  had  been  avoiding  her  eyes.  Now  he  looked 
at  her. 

"Well,  aren't  you?" 

It  was  true  then.  For  the  thousandth  time  they 
returned  to  their  weary  struggle  in  the  financial  net. 
In  the  midst  of  it,  Charley  poured  himself  a  drink. 

"  I  thought,"  said  Edith,  "  that  you  were  going  to 
quit  that?  " 

"  It's  taken  you  a  long  time  to  remember,"  he 
chuckled,  grimly;  "  and  I  don't  see  you  stopping." 

"  It  doesn't  hurt  me." 

"  And  I  couldn't  get  through  the  strain  without 
it.  When  everything's  all  right  again,  I'll  quit;  but 
nobody  could  expect  a  man  to  quit  when  he's  going 
through  what  I've  got  to  go  through  with." 

It  came  out  at  last — his  trouble.     He  had  fallen 


JIM  109 

behind  in  his  office-rent,  and  his  bar-checks  at  the 
club  were  overdue.  Both  debts  could  be  juggled  for 
a  time,  but  not  for  long. 

Edith  had  not  the  heart  again  to  urge  him  to 
lessen  his  business  expenses  and  resign  from  the 
club.  She  could  only  look  at  him  with  knitted  fin 
gers  and  wide  eyes: 

"  What  are  we  to  do?    What  are  we  to  do?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  answered. 

His  haggard  eyes  met  hers  again.  Then,  sud 
denly,  both  looked  away.  They  looked  out  of  the 
window  at  the  hazy  lights  and  the  wet  street,  at 
the  shining  tops  of  umbrellas  and  the  hunched  backs 
of  shambling  men  that  walked  unprotected  in  the 
rain. 

Edith's  voice  was  low.     It  was  toneless. 

"  Were  you  up  home  to-day?  " 

He  did  not  turn  his  head. 

"  Yes,"  he  said. 

"  How  were — things?  " 

"  He  seems  just  about  the  same." 

They  both  went  on  looking  out  of  the  window. 

§  2.  One  thing  seemed  possible:  if  there  were  no 
combating  exterior  forces,  Edith  could  at  least  con 
quer  the  morbid  fears  that,  she  believed,  sprang 
from  within.  The  next  afternoon  she  went  to  call 
on  Mrs.  Dunbar. 

She  was  close  to  the  Dunbar  house  when  she  saw  a 
motor  draw  up  at  the  steps.  She  saw  the  former 
Jean  Dent  get  out  and  go  into  the  house. 

Edith's  hesitation  was  momentary  and  concerned 


no  JIM 

itself  not  with  her  past  fears,  but  her  present  policy. 
Her  cards  read: 

MRS.  CHARLES  VANAMAN. 

But  Jean  had  never  met  Charley,  and  Edith  remem 
bered  that  the  news  of  the  second  marriage  had 
not  been  in  the  papers.  Once  she  had  been  glad  of 
this;  at  another  time  she  feared  that  the  news  would 
get  to  Mrs.  Dunbar  through  gossip,  even  though 
they  had  no  real  friends  in  common,  and  get  there 
in  a  fashion  unfavorable  to  the  match.  If  it  had  not 
got  there  at  all,  how  was  Jean  Dunbar  to  recognize 
this  new  name?  Edith  took  a  pencil  from  her  purse 
and,  under  "  Mrs.  Charles  Vanaman,"  scribbled  the 
words  "  Edith  Trent." 

She  rang  the  bell  and  sent  up  her  card  by  the  neat 
servant  who,  as  a  symbol  of  peace  and  prosperity, 
spurred  the  visitor's  longings.  To  think  that  she  had 
to  use  Jim's  name  in  order  to  enter  here !  Edith 
flushed:  she  would  have  been  just  as  intelligible  to 
Jean  if  she  had  written  "  Edith  Moxton." 

The  reception-room  into  which  she  had  been 
shown  was  rich,  but  quiet.  It  should  have  been 
soothing.  Edith,  tapping  a  restless  foot  in  a  thick 
rug,  heard  the  servant  descending  the  stairs: 

"  Mrs.  Dunbar  is  not  at  home,"  said  the  serv 
ant.  .  .  . 

§3.  Well,  let  them  cut  her,  let  them  send  down 
their  lying  "  not  at  homes."  Edith  would  not  sur 
render,  she  would  wait.  She  would  wait  for  her 
revenge.  That  would  come  when  the  sounder  made 


JIM  1 1 1 

her  rich;  and  when  the  sounder  made  her  rich,  Edith 
would  be  the  one  that  held  the  knife. 

Meanwhile,  there  was  Diana.  Edith  had  neg 
lected  Diana.  She  would  look  her  up  now.  She 
would  look  up  Diana  Wentworth  and  she  would 
make  new  friends,  too.  If  these  had  to  be  in  a  lower 
scale  than  Mrs.  Dunbar,  than  all  the  hopes  that 
Edith  had  fed  for  her  life  with  Charley,  they  would 
at  least  serve  to  lessen  the  present  tedium,  and  Jean 
had  taught  her  the  way  to  get  rid  of  undesirable 
acquaintances  when  prosperity  should  change  her 
visiting-list. 

She  put  her  resolution  into  harness.  Library-hours 
were  over:  she  called  at  Diana's  picturesque  flat  in  a 
"  model  tenement,"  and  Diana,  who  was  no  woman 
to  bear  grudges,  received  her  enthusiastically. 

"  You're  looking  thin  and Oh,  how  brave 

you  are !  "  said  Diana.  "  It's  splendid  to  see  a 
woman  enduring  so  much  for  Principle." 

Edith  shrank  from  that  unfinished  sentence,  but 
she  was  glad  to  find  a  welcome  and  said  so.  Diana 
talked  to  her  of  Archibald  Hodge  and  Sylvia  Tytus 
and  Womanism. 

u  You  must  come  around  to  the  Radical  Club," 
she  said,  "  I'll  take  you  some  evening.  It  is  such  a 
Melting-Pot  for  ideas.  You  get  an  idea  and  develop 
it  and  get  Everything  out  of  it  that  it  holds  for  your 
own  type.  Then  you  go  to  the  Radical  Club,  you 
know,  and  pass  it  on  to  some  other  type  who  can  get 
Everything  out  of  it  that  there  is  in  it  for  him,  and 
he  gives  you  an  idea  that  he's  got  Everything  out  of 
that  there  was  in  it  for  him,  and  you  get  Everything 
out  of  that  that  there  is  in  it  for  you.  And  so  you  go 


112  JIM 

on,  and  on,  and  on,"  Diana  nodded  her  handsome 
head.  "  That's  Growth,"  she  concluded. 

Edith  thought  she  would  like  to  grow — until  the 
invention  was  making  money.  She  did  not  at  once 
accept  Diana's  invitation  to  the  Radical' Club,  be 
cause  she  was  not  yet  ready  to  meet  crowds;  but  she 
did  let  Diana  introduce  her  to  several  people,  and 
among  these  she  took  especially  to  a  few  whose  rad 
icalism  limited  itself  to  art.  They  had  done  noth 
ing  as  yet,  but  they  were  surely  going  to  do  every 
thing;  they  were  not  at  all  in  Jim's  set,  so  they  pre 
sented  no  dangers  or  embarrassments,  and  Edith's 
life  with  Jim  had  made  her  a  little  less  ignorant  of 
art  than  of  sociology. 

Charley  had  been  cultivating  the  silence  of  des 
peration.  In  his  bearing  toward  Edith,  he  was  as 
affectionate  as  he  had  ever  been;  except  when  he 
dominated  her  by  one  of  his  sudden  rages,  he  feared 
her,  but  he  found  her  no  longer  a  mystery.  The 
memory  of  Jim  was  grown  to  an  obsession;  he  hated 
Jim  as  we  can  hate  only  those  we  have  wronged,  and 
when  even  Charley  had  to  admit  that  a  resignation 
from  his  club  was  imperative,  he  wrote  his  note  of 
withdrawal  from  this  pride  of  his  life  with  the  cer 
tainty  that  Jim  was  somehow  to  blame  for  it.  Busi 
ness  stood  still;  creditors  threatened.  Charley  had 
got  into  the  way  of  leaving  his  office  several  times 
daily  to  go  to  the  nearest  saloon  for  a  drink.  "  I'm 
going  out  for  a  moment,"  he  would  say  to  Miss 
Girodet,  his  stenographer;  "if  anybody  calls,  tell 
'em  I'll  be  right  back  "—and  he  would  return  smell 
ing  heavily  of  liquor  and  annoyed  because  nobody 
had  called.  He  was  putting  on  fat.  His  abdomen 


JIM  113 

bulged,  and  his  neck  overlapped  his  collar;  his 
cheeks,  on  which  tiny  purple  veins  became  visible, 
were  pendulous. 

At  Christmas  time  Edith  hoped  that  the  elder 
Vanaman  might  give  his  son  a  liberal  present,  but 
Charley's  father  gave  his  son  what  he  had  given  him 
at  every  Christmas  for  fifteen  years:  an  umbrella. 
She  herself,  somewhat  in  advance  of  the  season, 
sought  to  renew  touch  with  her  own  relatives,  whom 
she  had  theretofore  avoided  as  much  as  possible; 
but  she  was  not  much  more  successful  than  Charley: 
Uncle  Morty  maintained  a  diplomatic  silence.  Uncle 
Gregory,  the  rich  widower,  sent  her  a  five-dollar  bill 
and  said  that  he  did  not  approve  of  divorce ;  Doug 
las  wrote  that  his  wife  spent  all  the  money  he  could 
make;  Fred  was  lost  somewhere  with  the  waiter's 
daughter;  Aunt  Polly  expressed  a  box  containing 
a  dozen  rolls  of  ribbon  from  her  latest  shop  and  a 
lace  handkerchief  from  Aunt  Caroline;  Aunt  Hat- 
tie's  gift  was  a  year's  subscription  to  "  The  Church 
man,"  and  the  Rev.  Stephen,  to  whom  Edith  had  tim 
idly  hinted  that  she  might  visit  him  for  a  little  rest, 
sent  her  ten  dollars  and  told  her  that,  much  as  he  re 
gretted  it,  the  presence  of  a  divorced  sister  at  the 
rectory  might  make  talk  among  his  parishioners. 

It  was  about  this  time  that,  on  a  Sunday,  she  and 
Charley  happened  to  pass  a  little  hall  in  an  obscure 
street  where  her  radical  artists  were  holding  an 
exhibition.  She  had  tried  to  induce  her  husband  to 
meet  some  of  these  friends,  for  she  knew  that  it 
would  help  to  take  his  mind  from  business  worries; 
but  Charley  refused  because  they  were  what  Jim  had 
been. 


H4  JIM 

"  Let's  go  in  here,"  she  suggested. 

"  I  don't  want  to  go  in,"  said  Charley. 

"  It's  free,"  she  urged. 

"  I  don't  care.  I  haven't  got  any  use  for  artists. 
One  artist  is  all  I  need  for  a  lifetime,  thank  you." 

"  But  these  artists  aren't  like  Jim.  They  laugh 
at  his  kind  of  work.  Their  idea  is  to  get  back  to 
the  old  way:  they're  real  revolutionists,  you  see. 
They  want  to  paint  things  in  the  way  that  things  are 
and  not  in  the  way  the  artist  tries  to  think  he  sees 
them." 

Charley  was  not  interested  in  any  theory  of  art, 
but  the  fact  that  these  revolutionaries  were  opposed 
to  Jim  appealed  to  him.  He  consented  to  go  into 
the  narrow  room,  and  he  went  ready  to  espouse  the 
cause  of  the  exhibitors  for  the  best  of  reasons :  it 
was  a  cause  opposed  to  Jim's. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  glad  to  find  that  the  paint 
ings  had  a  direct  appeal  to  his  personal  taste.  They 
were  an  endeavor,  so  the  brief  catalogue  said,  "  to 
carry  back  into  the  Holy  Land  of  Art  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant  of  Beauty  which  has  been  banished  from 
those  sacred  fields  by  the  Philistine  brushes  of  men 
who  had  no  eye  for  it."  The  result  was  a  gallery 
full  of  Egyptian  queens  in  royal  galleys  rowed  by  un- 
sweating  slaves;  nymphs  posed,  on  a  sunlit  after 
noon,  in  the  shade  of  trees  of  which  no  leaf  cast 
any  shadow  on  the  models'  creamy  skin;  nude  Roman 
ladies  going  to  the  bath;  Guinever,  looking  from  a 
white  marble  battlement  for  Launcelot;  Napoleon 
(on  a  curveting  horse  and  in  stainless  clothes)  at 
Waterloo;  a  lover,  in  satin  knickerbockers,  about  to 
elope  with  a  lady  in  dancing-shoes.  Most  of  the  pic- 


JIM  115 

tures  illustrated  something  or  told  a  story,  and  all 
had  pretty  names.  Those  which  did  not  hark  back 
to  the  Diisseldorf  school  or  the  England  of  the  early 
eighties  allied  themselves  with  Bouguereau,  or 
Alma  Tadema,  or  Frederic  Leighton. 

"  There,"  said  Charley — "  now  there's  something 
like :  there's  something  I  can  understand" 

He  was  facing  a  picture  of  a  little  girl  who  had 
evidently  just  entered  a  doctor's  office.  The  little 
girl,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  was  holding  up  for  the 
physician's  inspection  a  doll  of  which  the  arm  had 
been  broken. 

"Number  a  hundred-and-one. — What's itsname?" 
he  asked  Edith. 

Edith  consulted  the  catalogue. 
'  Won't  you  mend  my  dollie?  '  "  she  read. 

"  Fine,"  said  Charley.  "  These  fellows  are  doing 
real  art.  They  paint  uncommon  things  and  you 
know  what  they  are;  Jim  and  his  crowd  paint  com 
mon  things  and  nobody  can  tell  what  they  are.  Take 
any  one  of  these  pictures:  I  can  tell  right  off  what 
it's  all  about." 

That  was  the  beginning  of  Charley's  introduction 
to  the  work  of  the  revolutionary  artists.  After  it, 
Edith  had  no  difficulty  in  taking  him  about  to  meet 
the  painters.  For  some  time,  she  and  her  husband 
were  a  part  of  the  cheaper  studio-life. 

§  4.  For  a  Saturday  afternoon  early  in  Janu 
ary,  they  received  invitations  to  a  tea  that  was  to  be 
given  by  one  of  these  artists:  a  Gladys  Smyser.  It 
was  written  in  white  ink  on  turkey-red  paper  and 
concluded  with  the  words: 


n6  JIM 

"  From  the  poems  of  Beryl  Henessy,  recitations 
by  Mr.  Ming." 

"Shall  we  go?"  asked  Edith. 

And  Charley  surprised  her  by  answering: 

"  Of  course  we'll  go.  This  is  the  sort  of  artists 
I'm  for." 

Miss  Smyser's  studio  was  at  the  rear  of  the 
top  floor  in  "  The  Beatrice,"  an  apartment-house  for 
unmarried  literary  and  artistic  women  on  the  east 
side  of  Washington  Square.  One  gained  access  by 
a  slow  elevator  that  climbed  only  two-thirds  of  the 
way  and  then — probably  because  it  grew  too  tired — 
stopped  short;  by  a  long  walk  down  a  dark  passage, 
and  by  a  final  ascent  up  two  flights  of  noisy  iron 
stairs.  Neither  Edith  nor  Charley  had  been  here 
before,  and  they  were  a  little  startled  by  what  they 
found. 

The  hall-door  of  Miss  Smyser's  apartment  struck 
a  chime  of  bells  as  it  was  opened.  The  hall  itself 
was  in  pitch  darkness.  Charley  stumbled  on  the 
discarded  overcoat  of  one  guest  and  put  his  foot 
through  the  derby  hat  of  another,  as  Edith  and  he 
were  led  forward  to  the  scarcely  brighter  studio  be 
yond. 

Here  heavy  curtains  of  crimson  plush  had  been 
drawn  across  the  windows,  and  about  the  picture- 
covered  walls  tiny  candles,  hanging  in  swinging 
sconces  before  ikons  or  sacred  images,  supplied  but 
the  faintest  illumination.  The  atmosphere  was  thick 
with  the  brown  spirals  of  smoke  from  Japanese  in 
cense  and  the  blue  spirals  from  many  cigarettes,  and 
through  this  Charley  could  discern  dim  persons  mov 
ing  gently  among  Oriental  tables,  inlaid  with  ivory, 


JIM  117 

or  seated  in  artistically  cramped  positions  on  low 
divans.  In  one  corner,  under  an  Italian  ivory  crucifix 
of  the  early  sixteenth  century,  a  tall,  dark  young  man 
served  tea,  and  a  short,  blond  young  woman  mixed 
sweet  cocktails  in  each  of  which  a  white  violet 
floated.  Everybody  was  smoking,  the  women  try 
ing  to  pretend  that  they  liked  it  as  well  as  the  men 
did,  and  though  everybody  talked  at  once,  all  con 
versation  was  in  whispers:  a  generally  fond  air 
pervaded  the  room. 

Miss  Smyser — Charley  could  make  out  only  that 
she  had  a  skinny  arm  and  was  dressed  in  what  looked 
like  a  crimson  kimono  figured  with  yellow  lotus- 
leaves — pressed  their  hands  and  peered  at  them 
through  the  pervading  smoke  of  the  incense. 

"  How  d'y'  do?  "  she  said  in  a  hissing  tone.  "  I 
can't  see  who  you  are,  but  I'm  awfully  glad  to  see 
you.  Isn't  this  splendid?  And  we've  got  Oswald 
Pusey  here.  Will  you  have  tea  and  brandy  or  only 
a  cocktail?  " 

They  took  cocktails — Charley  took  two  cocktails 
and  choked  on  the  violet  in  the  first  one,  much  to 
the  delight  of  the  dwarfed  blonde — and  then  Miss 
Smyser,  who  did  not  know  their  names  until  she  was 
half  way  around  the  room  with  her  introductions, 
presented  them  to  the  other  guests. 

Of  these  there  were  a  great  many:  far  more  than 
it  would  have  seemed  possible  the  room  could  hold. 
There  was  a  beefy  woman  with  a  corsage  in  immi 
nent  danger  of  explosion,  who  was  already  tipsy 
and  whose  mission  in  life,  Miss  Smyser  said,  was 
to  bring  the  truths  of  occultism  within  reach  of 
the  masses:  she  was  the  reincarnation  of  Jeanne 


n8  JIM 

d'Arc,  who,  in  her  turn,  had  been,  it  appeared,  the 
reincarnation  of  Sappho.  There  was  a  man  so  fat 
that,  having  seated  himself  at  this  lady's  feet,  he 
was  unable  to  rise,  and  he  was  a  composer  of  music — 
chiefly  love-songs  and  serenades.  There  was  a  doc 
tor  that  wrote  novels,  and  a  novelist  that  practiced 
drugless  medicine.  There  was  a  handsome,  sharp- 
eyed  man  who  announced  himself  as  the  sole- 
surviving  Calvinist  and  made  epigrams  that  were 
well  worth  while,  but  that  nobody  listened  to,  and  a 
sculptor  that  repeated  as  his  own  dead  men's  epi 
grams  that  everybody  applauded.  There  was  one 
woman  of  wealth,  position,  and  intellect,  who  was 
politely  bored,  and  several  rich  women  without  those 
other  two  attributes,  who  were  fascinated.  They 
were  patently  lenders,  and  about  them  hung  a  num 
ber  of  greedy-eyed  youths  and  other  borrowers. 
Through  the  crowd  moved  a  chain  of  six  girl- 
painters  following  a  pimpled  poetess,  and  a  little 
chorus  of  old  maiden-ladies  in  youthful  costumes 
stood  surrounding  a  lad  with  neutral-colored  hair 
who  sat  cross-legged  on  a  divan  and  appeared  to  talk 
in  his  sleep. 

"Who's  that?"  asked  Charley. 

Miss  Smyser  had  stopped  and  was  standing  uncer 
tainly  outside  the  circle  of  the  maiden-ladies'  chorus. 
She  gave  Charley  a  look  that  said:  "  Are  you  joking 
with  this  sacred  matter,  or  is  it  possible  that  you 
really  don't  know?  "  What  her  lips  whispered  was: 

"  Oswald  Pusey." 

Edith  saw  that  Charley  was  about  to  commit  the 
solecism  of  putting  the  fatal  question :  "  Who's  Os- 


JIM  119 

wald  Pusey?"  Indeed,  her  husband's  lips  were 
opening  to  utter  it,  when  she  interposed: 

"  We  so  admired  his  picture  of  Godiva  at  the  ex 
hibition,  Miss  Smyser — didn't  we,  Charley?  " 

She  had  checked  Charley,  who  changed  his  ques 
tion  to  an  "  Ugh-hugh  "  of  assent,  but  she  had  not 
much  improved  affairs  with  her  hostess.  Her  hostess 
said: 

"  Naturally." 

It  was  plain  that  everybody  must  admire  Mr. 
Pusey's  work. 

"  I'd  like  to  present  you,"  Miss  Smyser  pursued, 
"  but  you  can  see  that  he's  talking  Art — you  can  al 
ways  tell  that  by  the  way  he  closes  his  eyes — and 
Oswald  Pusey  won't  tolerate  the  breaking  of  his 
thread  of  thought  when  he's  talking  Art. — Oh,  there 
are  some  more  people  coming  in!  I  wonder  who 
they  are.  Excuse  me." 

She  went  to  the  newcomers,  leaving  E<Jith  and 
Charley  in  the  rear  of  Mr.  Pusey's  chorus. 

"I  remember  that  picture,"  said  Charley:  "the 
naked  girl  with  the  long  hair,  wasn't  it?" 

Edith  feared  he  was  speaking  too  loudly.  Hop 
ing  that  he  might  imitate  her  discretion,  she  made 
a  nod  serve  for  reply. 

"  Well,"  said  Charley,  "  that  girl  was  a  peach." 

"  Hush !  "  whispered  Edith.  "  Somebody — he 
might  hear  you." 

"What  if  he  does?"  inquired  her  husband,  but 
he  did  lower  his  voice.  "  He  don't  look  as  if  he'd 
mind  a  little  praising." 

Mr.  Pusey  certainly  did  not  seem  to  hate  himself. 
He  sat  with  his  pearl-gray  trousers  drawn  up  to 


120  JIM 

show  pearl-gray  socks  embroidered  with  purple  pan- 
sies.  He  still  appeared  to  be  asleep,  but  he  was  smil 
ing  in  his  sleep,  and  his  smile  was  divinely  com 
placent 

'What  else  do  you  know  about  him?"  asked 
Charley,  when  Edith  remained  silent  to  his  preceding 
query. 

"  Nothing,"  said  Edith  at  his  ear.  "  I  just  hap 
pened  to  remember  that  one  picture." 

In  fact,  it  was  the  only  picture  that  Mr.  Pusey 
had  ever  done  or  ever  would  do,  for,  shortly  after 
this  tea  at  "  The  Beatrice,"  he  married  the  richest 
of  his  maiden-lady  chorus,  who  was  also  the  oldest 
and  most  angular,  and  she  was  so  jealous  that  she 
would  not  let  him  paint  from  a  model  unless  she  her 
self  brought  her  embroidery  into  the  studio.  Pusey 
said  it  robbed  him  of  his  inspiration.  Edith  never 
saw  him  on  a  second  occasion,  nor  did  Charley,  but 
on  this  occasion  Charley  remained  for  some  time 
fascinated. 

They  stood  there  watching.  Every  little  while 
Mr.  Pusey  opened  his  eyes  ever  so  little  and  said 
something  about  Art  in  a  loud  voice,  apparently  ad 
dressing  empty  space;  but  Edith  noted  that  the 
slightest  inattention  on  the  part  of  anybody  else  in 
the  room — the  chorus  was  never  anything  but  rap 
turously  attentive — brought  faint  shadows  of  annoy 
ance  to  the  artist's  face. 

"  He  looks  kind  of  greenish,"  said  Charley. 
"Isn't  he  well?" 

"Hush!"  Edith  again  commanded.  "He'll  be 
sure  to  hear  you." 

"But    isn't    he    well?"    Charley    persisted.     "I 


JIM  121 

thought  maybe  he  was  consumptive  or  something." 

"  Of  course  he's  well,"  said  Edith:  "  only  he's  a 
genius;  that's  all.  Come  on  away." 

She  plucked  at  her  husband's  sleeve.  Charley, 
who  felt  the  effects  of  the  close  air  and  the  two 
cocktails,  was  rooted  to  his  point  of  vantage. 

"I  don't  believe  that's  all,"  said  Charley:  "just 
look  at  the  man's  eyes." 

The  man's  eyes  were  at  that  moment  open.  The 
irises  were  so  pale  as  to  be  indistinguishable  from 
the  yellow  surfaces  in  which  they  were  set.  Mr. 
Pusey  looked  still  asleep,  though  dreaming.  He  was 
speaking,  with  a  bony  gesture  of  his  left  hand, 
about  Art. 

The  maiden-ladies  applauded  by  a  great  intake 
of  the  choral  breath. 

Charley  chuckled.  Edith  was  relieved  when  one 
of  the  chain  of  six  artist-girls  accosted  him: 

"  I  saw  you  at  our  Exhibition  the  other  Sunday, 
Mr.  Vanaman,"  she  said.  She  looked  exactly  like 
Miss  Smyser.  So  did  all  her  companions.  The 
marks  of  identification  consisted  of  different  colored 
kimonos. 

"  Yes,"  said  Charley,  "  I  was  there.  Great 
show." 

"  Did  you  see  my  little  trifle?  "  asked  the  artist- 
girl. 

Charley  was  on  the  verge  of  displaying  the  truth 
when  Edith  once  more  saved  him. 

"  It  was  charming,"  said  she. 

"  Oh,  not  that,"  the  girl  deprecated.  "  Still,  I  do 
think  the  values  were  well  handled." 

This  time  Charley  was  too  quick  for  his  wife. 


122  JIM 

"  I'm  glad  you  made  a  good  bargain,"  he  said. 
"  The  only  artist  I  ever  knew  was  a  fool  in  money- 
matters." 

Edith  had  nudged  him,  but  she  was  tardy.  Leav 
ing  the  girl  between  a  smile  and  a  frown,  the  wife 
dragged  her  husband  toward  the  pimpled  poetess. 

"Why'n't  you  let  me  talk  to  her?"  grumbled 
Charley. 

Edith  was  saved  for  the  time  from  answering 
by  Miss  Smyser  clapping  her  hands  for  silence.  Mr. 
Pusey  appeared  mildly  hurt;  his  chorus  was  horri 
fied,  for  he  was  gasping  .his  way  toward  another 
aphorism;  but  the  rest  of  the  company  submitted. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  say,"  announced  Miss  Smyser, 
"  that  Miss  Beryl  Henessy  can't  be  here  to-day  to 
hear  her  own  poems  recited,  because  she  has  a  cold  in 
her  head." 

There  was  a  murmur  of  condolence  followed  by  a 
loud  sniff  from  the  pimpled  poetess. 

"  Nevertheless,"  continued  Miss  Smyser,  "  we  are 
to  have  the  best  of  Miss  Henessy  here,  for  she  says 
that  she  puts  what  is  best  of  her  into  her  poems,  and 
Mr.  Laurence  Ming  is  going  to  recite  some  of  Miss 
Henessy's  as  yet  unpublished  '  Love  Songs  frorn  a 
Cannibal  Jungle.'  " 

The  audience  fluttered  its  approbation.  Charley 
clapped  his  hands  once  loudly,  and  then,  finding  that 
he  was  alone  in  this  demonstration,  scowled  at  every 
body  else. 

Mr.  Laurence  Ming  came  to  the  center  of  the 
room.  He  was  a  diminutive  man  built  like  a  jack- 
in-the-box,  hinged  like  that  delight  of  innocent  child 
hood,  and  full,  like  it,  of  startlingly  sudden  gestures. 


JIM  123 

He  had  long  black  hair  and  the  eyes  of  a  sparrow. 
His  face  and  hands  were  the  color  of  mixed  mus 
tard — German  mustard — and  on  his  right  wrist  he 
wore  a  silver  bracelet. 

".I  ought  to  explain,"  he  said  in  a  high,  perky 
voice,  "  that  these  jungle  poems  of  Miss  Henessy's 
are  authentic.  Perfectly  authentic.  The  jungle 
poems  are  literal  translations.  From  the  Central 
African  dialects." 

Again  the  flutter  of  approbation — again  frowned 
into  silence  by  Charley.  The  audience  drew  itself 
back  into  attitudes  of  artistic  attention.  The  air  be 
came  hushed.  In  the  same  high  voice,  and  with  the 
same  jerky  intonation  in  which  he  had  first  spoken, 
Mr.  Ming,  punctuating  his  recital  by  gestures  that 
made  Charley  fear  the  little  man's  arms  would  fly 
away,  began: 

"  My  woman, 

My  lioness, 

My  she-elephant! 

Your  face  is  like  the  moon, 

It  is  like  the  full  moon,  like  the  moon  at  the  full; 

Daily  you  drink  five  cups  of  melted  fat. 

Where  you  walk,  there  your  tracks  are  like  the 
tracks  of  the  hippopotamus  when  he  passes 
through  the  mud  of  the  river-shore. 

Fear  you  that  I  shall  bewitch  you? 

I  will  bewitch  you ! 

I  will  crush  you  in  my  arms; 

I  will  strangle  you; 

I  will  tear  your  wide  cheeks  with  my  strong  teeth, 

Large  daughter  of  great  chieftains, 

My  woman, 

My  lioness, 

My  she-elephant!    That's  all!" 


i24  JIM 

The  concluding  phrase  was  Mr.  Ming's  intimation 
that  the  poem  had  indeed  come  to  an  end,  but  he 
uttered  it  as  if  it  were  part  of  the  last  line  of  the 
poem.  He  snapped  his  flying  arms  back  to  his  side 
and  snapped  his  head  as  if  it  were  the  lash  of  a 
whip. 

The  audience  breathed  deeply  by  way  of  applause. 
The  doctor  that  wrote  novels  said  something,  in  a 
stage-whisper,  about  the  beauty  of  the  primitive  pas 
sions.  • 

"  Art,"  said  Mr.  Oswald  Pusey,  "  is  eternal." 

His  attending  maiden-ladies  chorused:  "  Yes." 

Mr.  Ming  was  encored  half  a  dozen  times,  and 
Charley  took  a  cocktail  after  each.  Then  the 
pimpled  poetess  whispered  indignantly  to  Miss  Smy- 
ser,  and  Miss  Smyser  called  for  volunteers  to  recite 
some  of  the  pimpled  poetess's  poems.  The  response 
was  uncertain,  so  the  author  herself  took  the  floor. 

"  I  want  to  take  the  universe  in  my  arms- 
she  began. 

"  She  weighs  about  sixty  pounds,"  commented 
Charley. 

But  the  poetess  went  on: 

"  I  want  to  take  the  universe  in  my  arms 
Without  alarms, 
And  face  to  face, 
In  cosmic  love-embrace, 
Love  it  for  one  long  siderial  day; 
It  satiate, 
My  mighty  mate, 
Then  slay 
And  fling  away!  " 


JIM  125 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Charley:  "she  don't  weigh  a 
pound  above  sixty-two  and  a  half,  and  she'd  run 
from  a  rabbit." 

He  irritated  Edith. 

"Stop!"  she  whispered;  "after  the  break  you 
made  about  that  girl's  picture,  I  should  think  you'd 
have  done  enough." 

"What  break?"  asked  Charley,  belligerently. 
"  The  girl  said  she'd  got  a  good  value  for  her  pic 
ture,  and  I  said  I  was  glad  she  made  a  good  bar 
gain." 

"  Yes,"  said  Edith,  "  that's  exactly  what  you  did 
say.  I  suppose  you  didn't  know  that  '  values  '  is  an 
art-term  and  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  sales." 

Charley  reddened. 

"  I  forgot  you'd  been  an  artist's  wife,"  he  said, 
savagely. 

,The  smoke  of  the  cigarettes  had  banished  the 
odor  of  the  incense.  Through  the  blue  cloud,  as 
Edith  and  Charley  relapsed  into  a  sullen  quiet,  they 
heard  one  of  the  chain  of  artist-girls  talking  to  an 
other. 

"  Of  course  James  Trent  can't  paint:  I  don't  have 
to  know  him  to  know  that,"  she  was  saying;  "but 
now  the  whole  of  Society'll  be  running  after  him. 
That  portrait  of  Bishop  Peel  has  set  him  up  for 
life." 

Edith  and  Charley  had  forgotten  their  quarrel. 
They  were  listening. 

"I  know,"  the  other  girl  answered;  "that's  the 
way  it  goes.  Success  always  comes  with  a  rush. 
They  say  he  has  more  orders  than  he  can  fill  in  a 
year." 


126  JIM 

"  And  that's  not  all,"  said  the  first  gossip:  "  he's 
selling  all  his  old  stuff  as  fast  as  he  can  send  it  to  the 
dealers.  ..." 

§  5.  Edith  and  Charley  passed  from  the  heavy 
twilight  of  "  The  Beatrice  "  to  the  cold  twilight  in 
Washington  Square.  For  some  time  neither  spoke. 

"  Well,"  said  Edith  at  last,  "  what  do  you  think 
of  that?" 

Charley  grunted. 

"  A  divorced  man,"  said  Edith,  "  and  he  paints 
a  portrait  of  a  Bishop  that's  down  on  divorce. 
Don't  they  know  about  him?  Don't  they  know  ?  I 
suppose,  next,  he'll  be  wanting  to  sell  that  picture  he 
painted  of  me.  He'll  never  sell  that,  anyway:  it's 
no  good.  Such  luck  as  he  has!  He'd  say  it  was  the 
result  of  hard  work.  If  it  is,  it's  the  result  of  hard 
work  I  had  to  put  up  with  in  him  when  he  had  no 
time  for  his  own  wife." 

They  were  across  the  Square  now.  Edith  paused 
from  her  monologue  through  sheer  want  of  breath; 
but  Charley  said  nothing:  his  anger  was  beyond 
words. 

"  Well,"  said  Edith,  "  Jim'd  better  make  hay  while 
the  sun  shines.  He  can't  fool  people  long.  This  is 
his  one  chance.  It  won't  go  on  but  a  month  or  two. 
You'll  see " 

"  Go  on  up;  I'll  be  back  in  a  minute,"  said  Char 
ley,  when  he  had  brought  her  across  Sixth  Avenue  to 
the  door  of  their  lodging-house.  "  Just  excuse  me." 

On  the  other  side  of  the  street,  a  yellow  light  was 
shining  through  the  ground-glass  doors  of  a  saloon. 


EIGHTH  CHAPTER 

EDITH  soon  found  that  it  is  easier  to  recover 
from  one's  own  reverses  than  from  the  suc 
cesses  of  those  whom  one  dislikes.  A  read 
justment  there  finally  was,  of  course:  the  presence 
in  the  house  of  an  unpaid  landlady  cannot  forever 
be  denied  by  the  most  preoccupied  consciousness;  and 
no  matter  what  one  learns  of  an  absent  foe,  his  con 
tinued  absence  does  gradually  lessen  the  poignancy 
of  good  news  about  him  until  more  good  news 
is  reported;  but,  for  a  brief  period,  the  word  of  an 
enemy's  well-being  is  often  so  shocking  that  it  numbs 
one  against  the  pangs  of  the  illness  from  which  one 
suffers.  Within  a  few  days  Edith  was  giving 
little  thought  to  her  burden  of  debt  and  poverty, 
whereas  weeks  were  to  pass  before  the  pain  of  what 
she  had  overheard  at  Miss  Smyser's  tea  appreciably 
lessened. 

January  closed  with  one  stroke  of  good  luck: 
Charley  managed  to  borrow  from  Mame,  who  had 
lately  been  putting  three-quarters  of  her  allowance 
into  bank,  enough  to  pay  the  rent  for  his  office  and 
the  two  rooms  in  Greenwich  Village;  but  his  relief 
was  transitory,  and  reliable  hope  of  permanent 
safety  remained  as  distant  as  it  had  been  in  mid 
winter.  He  had  relatively  heavy  expenditures,  and 
his  sole  income  was  the  weekly  check  that  his  father 
signed  for  him.  Capital  went  on  nibbling  at  the  bait 
of  his  invention — and  swimming  away.  Sometimes 

127 


128  JIM 

the  fisherman  sat  on  the  sun-baked  bank  for  days  to 
gether  with  no  encouragement;  sometimes  he  fell 
asleep  and  woke  to  wonder  if  he  had  missed  a  catch; 
sometimes  there  was  a  tug  at  his  line  which  pulled  its 
cork  beneath  the  muddy  surface  of  the  water  and 
roused  palpitant  enthusiasms  that  the  more  skillful 
manipulations  of  his  rod  failed  to  justify;  twice  at 
least,  during  February  and  March,  he  had  on  his 
hook  a  fish  that  fought  itself  free  before  he  could 
draw  it  ashore :  he  caught  nothing.  He  missed  the 
outlet  that  his  club  had  given  him;  neither  he  nor 
Edith  wished  again  to  mix  with  artists,  because  they 
wanted  to  hear  no  more  of  Jim;  he  grew  deeper  and 
deeper  into  the  habit  of  secret  drinking  to  supple 
ment  the  drinking  that  Edith,  in  grudging  silence, 
still  permitted  him,  more  and  more  into  the  custom 
of  excusing  himself  from  the  pressure  of  someone 
whose  talk  made  him  nervous  and  of  slipping  out 
for  a  drink  before  renewing  the  task  of  such  a  con 
versation;  he  brooded  dumbly,  as  did  Edith  too, 
more  and  more  upon  the  snail's  pace  of  the  elder 
Vanaman's  disease. 

Their  love  did  not  lessen,  but  their  quarrels  in 
creased  in  both  frequency  and  violence.  More  than 
once  Edith  yawned  when  Charley  was  telling  her  one 
of  his  Asiatic  adventures,  and  more  than  once  she 
interrupted  him  by  saying:  "Yes,  I  know:  you've 
told  me  that  before."  At  the  height  of  a  dispute  that 
began  in  nothing  and  was  not  ended  for  hours,  the 
thought  came  to  him,  and  he  nearly  uttered  it: 
"  What  I've  got  is  something  that  Jim  cast  off." 
Charley  was  not  looking  well.  He  was  steadily 
fattening,  the  veins  in  his  pendulous  cheeks  assumed 


JIM  129 

an    intenser    color,    the    whites    of    his    eyes    were 
grayish. 

§  2.  When  the  serenity  of  April  came  into  the 
air,  it  modified,  for  a  time,  the  mood  of  both.  For 
a  while,  it  said  to  Edith  that  she  was  still  young 
and  still  had  her  chance,  and,  for  a  while,  she  be 
lieved  it.  It  said,  for  a  while,  to  Charley  that  he  was 
still  alert  and  resourceful,  and  Charley,  for  a  while, 
listened.  It  sent  them  out  to  dinner  one  night  to  a 
cheap  "  Italian  table  d'hote  restaurant "  on  Tenth 
Street,  where  they  ate  food  so  highly  seasoned  as  to 
defy  detection,  among  a  crowd  of  diners  whom  des 
peration  had  driven  from  surrounding  boarding- 
houses  and  through  a  blaze  of  music  that  every 
patron  preferred  to  his  own  thoughts  and  the  talk 
of  his  companion. 

There  was  one  tune  especially  lively.  The  cus 
tomers  stopped  eating  to  whistle  it;  people  with  their 
mouths  full  hummed.  When  the  orchestra — it  con 
sisted  of  a  piano  and  two  violins — stopped,  there 
was  a  sound  of  applause  and  a  demand  that  the  tune 
be  repeated.  At  a  table  near  Edith  and  Charley  sat 
a  man  of  about  sixty,  who  had  a  serviette  tucked 
under  his  chin;  he  was  dining  with  a  girl  of  scarcely 
sixteen,  and  his  applause  was  among  the  loudest. 

Charley  liked  the  tune.    He  whistled,  too. 

'  That's  a  good  one,"  he  said,  when  the  encore 
was  ended.  "  What's  its  name?  " 

"  I  think  it's  called  '  Too  Much  Mustard,'  or 
something  like  that,"  said  Edith.  "  It's  the  music 
for  one  of  those  dances  the  newspapers  are  beginning 
to  make  such  fun  of." 


i3o  JIM 

Both  she  and  Charley  had  been  leading  a  cloistered 
life;  they  had  left  the  cafe  world  shortly  before  the 
cabaret  invaded  it  with  hired  dancers,  but  Edith  con 
tinued  to  read  the  papers  in  detail  while  her  hus 
band's  newspaper-reading  was  confined  to  the  finan 
cial  columns. 

"  The  tango  and  that  sort  of  thing? "  Char 
ley  chuckled:  tango  was  a  name  to  him  and  little 
more.  "  I'd  like  to  see  how  it's  done." 

"  Everybody's  tangoing,"  said  Edith.  A  pang  of 
envy  caught  her.  "  It's  the  latest  thing." 

"  If  it's  up  to  that  tune  this  orchestra  just  played, 
I'll  bet  it  sure  has  some  class,"  said  Charley.  Then 
he  said  again:  "  I'd  like  to  see  how  these  new  dances 
are  done." 

He  was  to  have  his  wish.  While  he  spoke,  a  pair 
of  waiters  had  been  clearing  a  space  at  the  far  end 
of  the  room,  and  now  the  orchestra  started  a  tune 
that  was  even  more  titillating  than  the  last. 

It  was  a  tune  that  laughed  at  everything,  a  tune 
that  set  the  pulses  jumping  to  its  rhythm,  and  its 
effect  upon  the  company  was  mesmeric,  thaumatur- 
gical.  As  at  the  waving  of  a  wizard's  wand,  diners 
jumped  from  their  chairs,  some  surging  to  the 
cleared  space,  and  some  dexterously  utilizing  such 
space  as  there  was  between  the  tables.  Many  were 
dancing  while  their  mouths  still  worked  on  the  food 
that  the  music  had  surprised  there.  Charley  saw  the 
elderly  man  of  the  serviette  already  whirling  with 
his  young  companion:  either  he  had  forgotten  to 
remove  it  or  the  waving  wand  had  not  given  him 
enough  time  to  do  so:  it  flapped  in  his  partner's 
pretty  eyes,  and  she  did  not  notice  it.  What  had,  an 


JIM  i3t 

instant  before,  been  a  roomful  of  more  or  less 
staid  diners  was  now  a  roomful  of  bouncing  marion 
ettes. 

Edith  and  Charley  watched  particularly  a  slim, 
handsome  young  man  and  a  graceful  girl.  He  had 
seemed  to  lift  his  partner  from  her  chair  and  to  be 
dancing  with  her  before  her  feet  touched  the  floor. 
They  dipped  with  their  knees  together,  they  pivoted, 
trotted,  ducked,  and  twirled.  Now  he  flung  her 
from  him  as  if  in  a  rage  with  her,  and  now  he 
snatched  her  back  and  crushed  the  breath  from  her 
against  his  panting  breast. 

Charley  looked  at  Edith  and  saw  that  she  was 
watching  with  eyes  bright  and  parted  lips.  He  had 
long  ago  drunk  all  of  the  small  bottle  of  acrid  red 
wine  that  the  table  d'hote  provided  him.  He  leaned 
across  the  table,  poured  and  drank  what  was  left  of 
hers.  She  did  not  see  him  do  it;  she  saw  nothing  but 
the  dancers.  Charley  frowned. 

"  Why,  I  know  that  dance,"  he  declared.  His 
tone  was  all  amazed  disapproval.  "  I  saw  it  years 
ago  when  I  came  back  from  China.  And  do  you 
know  where  I  saw  it?  In  'Frisco.  On  the  Barbary 
Coast  in  'Frisco,  the  toughest  place  on  earth." 

She  did  not  turn  her  eyes. 

"  I'm  talking  to  you,  Edith !  "  he  said. 

"  Oh !  "  She  started.  "  Yes,"  she  said ;  "  I  heard 
you." 

"And  these  aren't  professionals?"  he  asked. 

Her  gaze  was  wandering  back  to  the  dancers. 
She  shook  her  head. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  respectable  people  do 
it?" 


I32  JIM 

She  nodded. 

He  raised  his  voice: 

"Swell  people,  too?" 

"  All  night  and  every  night." 

"When  did  they  go  crazy?" 

He  commanded  her  attention,  and  she  had  to 
give  it.  She  told  him  that  the  mania  had  been  sud 
den,  acute,  severe.  It  was  still  new,  but  young  and 
old  in  all  classes  were  afflicted. 

"  And  it  looks  worse  here  than  it  did  out  in  those 
'Frisco  dives,"  said  Charley,  emphatically. 

The  few  persons  that  had  remained  seated  were 
beating  an  accompaniment  to  the  music  with  their 
knives  on  their  wine-glasses.  Their  feet  were 
stamping  in  unison.  Here  and  there  somebody 
would  shout  a  few  of  the  words  that  belonged  to  the 
music — words  that  aptly  expressed  its  spirit. 

Edith  was  looking  again  at  the  slim  young  man 
and  the  graceful  girl.  They  pivoted,  dipped,  and 
then  met  in  a  swift  embrace.  Her  cheeks  were 
flushed,  and  his  were  pale;  her  eyes  were  filmy,  and 
his  like  blazing  lamps. 

u  It's  not  decent,"  said  Charley,  as  his  scowl 
followed  Edith's  gaze.  "  It's  positively  rotten.  I 
should  think  the  cops  would  pinch  this  place." 

'  The  newspapers  say,"  replied  Edith,  "  that  all 
the  nice  places  are  having  it."  She  did  not  turn  to 
him  as  she  spoke. 

"  Then  the  cops  ought  to  pinch  them,  too,"  said 
Charley.  "  It's  a  disgrace." 

"  People  used  to  say  the  same  thing  about  the 
two-step.  It  depends  on  who  dances  it  and  how." 
She  gave  him  the  corner  of  her  eye.  "  Haven't  you 


JIM  133 

really  seen  about  it  in  the  papers  the  last  few 
weeks?  " 

"  I've  seen  it  there,  but  I  haven't  read  it.  I 
haven't  any  time  for  such  stuff :  I  got  to  work." 

"  Well,  the  papers  are  full  of  advertisements  of 
people  that  teach  it,  and  they  say  some  teachers  get 
more  than  fifteen  dollars  a  lesson." 

"  Then  they've  got  fools  for  pupils."  Seeing  her 
again  relapsing  into  the  fascination  of  the  spectacle, 
Charley  continued:  "It's  a  nigger  dance,  that's 
what  it  is.  A  fellow  out  in  'Frisco  told  me  all  about 
it  and  he'd  been  to  the  Congo  and  knew.  The  can 
nibals  dance  it  in  Africa,  and  here  we  are " 

"  You  didn't  seem  to  mind  the  cannibal's  love- 
poems  at  Miss  Smyser's,"  said  Edith,  quietly. 

"I  wasn't  singing  them  myself,  was  I?  And  I 
wouldn't  dance  this."  He  paused  and  eyed  her;  then 
concluded:  "I  wouldn't  dance  this,  and  I  wouldn't 
have  you  dance  it  for  anything  in  the  world.  Re 
member  that." 

Edith  did  not  answer.  Under  the  secrecy  of  the 
table,  her  tingling  toes  moved  restlessly.  Then  one 
hand,  resting  in  her  lap,  began  to  beat  time.  She 
knew  how  Charley  would  object,  but  it  was  all  that 
she  could  do  to  keep  her  head  from  beating  time 
also.  .  .  . 

She  wanted  to  dance — she  wanted  to  dance ! 

§  3.  They  continued,  after  their  own  fashion,  to 
love  each  other:  they  had  sacrificed  too  much  to  gain 
each  other,  risked  too  much,  broken  too  many  of 
the  conventions  that  both  inherited,  not  to  go  on 
loving:  as  the  Spring  warmed  them,  it  brought  mo- 


i34  JIM 

ments  when  their  love  was  stronger,  was  even  some 
thing  finer,  than  it  had  ever  been  before;  it  rose  and 
fell,  as  all  love  does;  but  it  did  not  fall  so  deep  that 
it  could  not  reclimb.  And  yet,  notwithstanding  this 
—almost,  it  seemed  dependent  upon  it — their  quar 
rels  continued,  too;  the  heat  of  these  precisely 
equaled  the  heat  of  the  love  that  preceded  and  fol 
lowed  them;  it  was  as  if  aversion  had  become  the 
natural  reaction  from  attraction. 

There  were  occasions  when  this  need  to  quarrel 
was  not  a  need  to  quarrel  with  each  other,  when  the 
joint  streams  could,  if  taken  early,  be  diverted  into 
a  common  channel,  and  on  those  occasions  they  di 
rected  them  toward  Jim.  Now  and  again  the  waters 
of  their  wrath  would  beat  in  vain  against  the  rock 
of  his  memory,  find  it  so  firm  that  it  drove  them  back 
and  set  the  two  streams  to  struggling  with  each  other 
after  all;  but  there  were  other  times  when  the  device 
served,  and  when  they  spent  themselves  in  an  alli 
ance  of  anger.  They  passed  hours  in  confessing, 
each  to  each,  their  opinions  of  him,  in  jeering  at  him, 
denouncing  him,  to  the  walls  of  their  poor  living- 
room,  dissecting  his  past  motives,  sneering  at  his 
present  success,  prophesying  his  future  downfall. 
Sometimes  their  domestic  talk  would  run  for  days 
upon  nothing  but  Jim. 

The  first  effect  in  Edith  of  reflection  on  her  former 
husband's  good  fortune  was  a  strengthening  of  her 
resolve  to  have  Charley  succeed.  He  must  succeed. 
If  he  could  not  do  it  alone,  she  must  somehow  find 
means  to  help  him :  he  must  be  more  successful  than 
Jim. 

Although  she  had  had  her  black  moments  since 


JIM  135 

their  marriage,  she  had  never  seriously  doubted 
the  final  triumph  of  Charley  and  his  invention.  She 
had  feared  that  circumstances  might  be  for  a  long 
while  against  him,  but  she  believed  in  the  sounder, 
in  the  ability  of  merit  to  achieve  commercial  suc 
cess;  and  she  had  never  thought  that  failure  might 
be  inherent  in  Charley.  Now,  however,  she  saw 
that  her  resolve  was  taken  with  a  sort  of  despera 
tion,  and  she  knew  that  a  desperate  hope  can  spring 
from  nothing  but  an  immedicable  doubt.  She  remem 
bered  her  father,  and  her  girlhood  passed  in  an  at 
mosphere  of  defeat.  Was  Charley  a  failure,  too? 
She  remembered  fatuous  Uncle  Gregory,  blundering 
into  dentistry  and  saved  only  by  his  marriage;  her 
Uncle  Morty,  keeping  his  nose  above  water  solely  by 
seizing  the  life-belt  that  had  been  flung  to  his  niece; 
her  stupid,  discomfited  aunts,  living  Christian  lives 
on  the  moody  charity  of  a  swindler;  her  brothers, 
one  in  hiding,  a  second  working  his  life  out  for  an 
exacting  wife,  the  third  a  spiritual  coward  in  a  small 
town  parish.  Was  it  possible  that  these  had  infected 
her  with  the  bacillus  of  frustration?  Was  the 
disease  in  the  Moxton  blood?  She  had  heard  that 
persons  predisposed  to  tuberculosis  seemed  born 
with  an  especial  terror  of  that  ill.  Perhaps  her 
innate  horror  of  failure  was  some  such  expression 
of  her  doom,  some  such  instinctive  protest  against 
the  inevitable. 

No,  it  could  not  be  that;  it  was  Jim.  If  she  had 
never  met  him,  she  would  certainly  not  be  where  she 
was  to-day,  and  if  she  had  not  been  Jim's  divorced 
wife,  the  elder  Vanaman  would  have  received  her 
into  his  family,  and  all  would  now  have  been  well. 


i36  JIM 

As  it  was,  why  had  she  so  readily  assumed  that 
Charley  would  be  a  success?  She  knew  little 
about  him,  in  the  old  days,  save  what  he  himself  told 
her;  she  knew  nothing  about  telegraphy  now.  Sup 
pose  the  invention  proved  useless :  they  could  not 
be  completely  certain  that  Charley's  father  had  not 
heard  of  the  marriage  and  held  his  tongue.  He 
might  already  have  drawn  a  will  leaving  his  money 
to  Mame. 

§  4.  Then  Diana  Wentworth,  whose  loyalty  had 
not  been  dampened  and  whose  admiration  continued 
firm,  insisted  on  taking  them  to  a  meeting  of  the 
Radical  Club. 

This  was  an  organization  that  had  had  a  troubled 
career.  It  was  started  by  a  number  of  uptown  young 
men  who  read  the  magazines  of  exposure  and  thereby 
learned  that  Tammany  Hall  was  corrupt.  The 
young  men  were  at  first  shocked  by  this  knowledge, 
but  they  soon  became  accustomed  to  it  and  regarded 
it  as  their  own  peculiar  discovery  and  possession. 
They  found  that  a  communication  of  small  portions 
of  it  to  their  middle-class  friends  shocked  those 
friends,  and  the  young  men  thus  experienced  that 
delicious  thrill  which  is  entailed  in  shocking  other 
people  without  discommoding  oneself.  They  ac 
quired  the  habit.  It  struck  them  that  to  expose 
political  corruption  without  having  to  meet  bad  com 
pany  was  to  be  Liberal,  and  that  to  champion  the 
cause  of  the  poor  without  risking  poverty  was  to  be 
Radical.  The  shock  of  their  first  discovery  left 
them  with  an  appetite  for  more  shocks,  so  they 
shocked  themselves  by  calling  themselves  Radicals 


JIM  137 

and  forming  a  club  to  which  women  were  admitted. 
In  order  to  keep  up  their  supply  of  ammunition,  they 
invited  the  writers  of  the  literature  of  exposure  to 
address  them,  and  in  order  to  show  to  the  world  their 
own  limitless  democracy,  they  set  up  their  clubhouse 
not  on  Fifth  Avenue,  but  on  Union  Square.  Union 
Square,  they  said,  was  positively  proletarian. 

Radicalism,  however,  is  like  most  things  that  are 
easily  started:  it  is  hard  to  stop.  These  young  men 
from  uptown  felt  they  must  demonstrate  their  sin 
cerity  by  accepting  to  membership  in  their  club  at 
least  a  few  persons  from  downtown:  of  course  not 
many,  at  first,  and  only  the  fellows  that  could  at 
once  be  interesting  specimens  for  study  and  wear 
clean  collars;  the  sort  of  people  than  can  give  you 
a  feeling  of  your  superiority  in  recognizing  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  without  offending  you  by  ex 
pecting  to  be  introduced  to  your  sister,  or  saving  the 
fish-fork  for  the  ice-cream.  So  North  and  South, 
East  Side  and  West,  began  to  mingle  in  the  halls 
of  the  Radical  Club  in  proletarian  Union  Square,  and 
gradually  the  interesting  specimens  that  knew  how  to 
behave  smuggled  into  membership  interesting  speci 
mens  that  behaved  very  badly,  and  the  original  radi 
cals,  one  by  one,  received  their  final  shock,  lost  in 
terest,  and  retired.  ' 

The  "  new  lot,"  as  the  founders  of  the  club  some 
times  spitefully  described  them,  were  immensely 
democratic.  They  could  not  help  being,  for  they 
were  school-teachers  dissatisfied  with  their  pay; 
dramatists  from  Akron,  Ohio,  against  whom  the 
lords  of  the  theatrical  trust  entered  into  elaborate 
conspiracies;  authors  whom  publishers  and  magazine 


i38  JIM 

editors  and  successful  writers  had  combined  to  keep 
out  of  print;  inventors  of  fresh  philosophies,  fresh 
religions,  fresh  spelling-books;  male  spinsters; 
women  desperately  unmarried;  all  the  hopeless  chaff 
of  respectable  boarding-houses  anxious  to  espouse 
any  cause  that  they  could  be  deceived  into  believing 
new.  They  were  excellently  fitted  to  maintain  a 
Radical  Club  on  Union  Square,  but  they  did  not 
have  the  money,  so  they  moved  into  part  of  a  house 
on  Eighth  Avenue. 

This  migration  left  behind  it  some  of  the  "  new 
lot,"  because  a  few  of  the  new  lot  considered  Eighth 
Avenue  undignified,  and  others  did  not  like  to 
walk  through  that  part  of  town  by  night.  Never 
theless,  their  places  were  filled  by  persons  that  lived 
in  the  neighborhood  and  other  places  were  made  for 
more,  so  that  there  was  now  a  newer  lot  which  was 
uncomfortably  shouldering  the  new.  And,  as  the  new 
lot  had  short  memories  in  the  small  matter  of  dues 
—being  engrossed  in  schemes  for  world-regeneration, 
how  could  they  remember  details,  or,  when  reminded, 
attend  to  them? — the  membership  was  again  being 
extended  and  the  thin  edge  of  the  newest  lot  already 
inserted. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  about  clubs  that  they  defy 
the  Spencerian  laws;  their  evolution  is  never  upward, 
and  bad  blood  grows  worse  and  perpetuates  itself 
at  the  expense  of  good.  In  this  organization,  the 
new  lot  called  themselves  Socialists,  believed  in  mu 
nicipal  reform  and  shuddered  at  the  political  ideals 
of  the  newer  lot;  the  newer  lot  scoffed  at  the  ultra 
montane  tendencies  of  the  new,  called  themselves 
Socialists,  were  party  men — Socialist  Party  men  of 


JIM  139 

the  my-party-right-or-wrong  school — and  were  horri 
fied  by  the  iconoclastic  doctrines  of  the  newest  lot; 
the  newest  lot  ridiculed  both  the  new  and  the  newer, 
foreswore  all  politics,  preached  Direct  Action,  and 
at  least  said  that  they  trembled  at  nothing.  In  brief, 
the  Radical  Club  was  still  conservative,  but  was  in 
grave  danger  of  becoming  radical. 

'  The  next  thing  we  know,"  said  Diana  Went- 
worth,  who  belonged  to  the  new  lot,  "  we'll  be  letting 
in  a  lot  of  Anarchists." 

She  was  to  be  the  chief  speaker  on  this  evening  and 
she  undisguisedly  considered  Edith's  company  and 
Charley's  a  personal  tribute. 

"  I'm  going  to  speak  on  Fatherhood,"  Miss  Went- 
worth  added.  "  The  Inutility  of  Fatherhood.  I 
am  to  open  the  discussion  and  of  course  I'll  advocate 
Archibald  van  Houyz's  point  of  view." 

"  Van  Houyz?  "  repeated  Edith.  "  Do  you  mean 
the  man  you  said  was  going  in  for  simplified  spell- 
ing?" 

"  He  is  not  '  going  in  for  it,'  "  Diana  corrected 
her:  "he  has  invented  a  system  of  his  own.  It's  a 
new  system.  It  is  based  on " 

"  I  thought  you  told  me  his  name  was  Hodge." 

"  It  was,  but  he's  changed  it.  Sylvia  Tytus 
thought  van  Houyz  was  more  euphonious,  and  I 
agreed  with  her.  So  he's  changed  it.  He'll  be  there 
to-night,  and  Sylvia,  too.  You'll  meet  them. 
They're  wonderful  types." 

§  5.  By  removing  the  folding-doors  that  once 
separated  them,  two  rooms  had  been  thrown  into 
one,  and  a  couple  of  opened  doors,  connecting  the 


140  JIM 

rear  room  with  an  anteroom  behind,  gave  space  far 
the  overflow  of  the  audience.  The  walls  were  se 
verely  bare  of  decoration,  as  the  walls  of  so  serious 
an  institution  ought  to  be,  but  betrayal  spoke  from  a 
mute  mechanical  piano,  at  present  shoved  into  one 
corner,  for,  on  certain  evenings  of  the  week,  these 
Radicals  turned  from  righting  the  wrongs  of  Labor 
in  the  next  generation  to  making  gayer  their  own 
condition:  the  disease  of  the  tango  had  spread  even 
to  the  newest  lot  and  most  revolutionary.  Rows 
of  wooden  chairs  had  been  placed  in  both  rooms, 
and  seated  on  these  chairs,  or  filling  the  aisles  and 
lounging  at  the  windows,  were  the  devotees  of 
freedom. 

If  they  did  not  belong  to  the  mass,  they  formed 
one.  It  was  only  after  some  time  that  the  observer 
could  separate  them,  individualize  them,  and  then 
they  had  first  to  be  divided  into  their  groups  of  new 
est,  newer,  and  new.  Here  were  the  pale,  dissatis 
fied  faces  of  the  new  lot;  strained,  nervous  faces  they 
were;  dissatisfied  with  life  because  it  had  made  them 
respectable  and  withheld  the  rewards  of  respectabil 
ity,  souls  sick  and  groping  for  an  unknown  remedy. 
Here,  in  almost  equal  numbers,  were  the  newer  lot, 
equally  dissastisfied,  but  with  the  tense  face  of  the 
zealot,  whose  faith  no  fact  or  argument  can  move, 
whom  defeat  can  only  stimulate,  and  who  is  certain 
he  can  effect  a  cure  if  only  he  can  force  the  world 
to  try  his  panacea.  And  here,  finally,  were  the  few 
newest,  the  long-haired,  unshaven,  careless  apostles 
of  denial,  the  only  happy  faces  in  that  audience. 
Seated,  the  men  and  women  looked  extraordinarily 
alike  and  like  neither  men  nor  women. 


JIM  141 

At  first  there  was  no  one  that  sufficiently  stood  out 
to  excite  Edith's  curiosity.  Then  Diana  plucked  at 
her  sleeve. 

"  There's  Archibald  van  Houyz  and  Sylvia,"  she 
said. 

Van  Houyz  was  standing  in  the  center  of  the 
front  room :  he  almost  always  stood  and  he  always 
chose  the  center  of  a  room.  Looking  at  him,  the  first 
thing  that  Edith  noticed  was  that  here  was  a  man 
wearing  knickerbockers  in  New  York;  the  next  was 
that,  in  place  of  shirt  and  waistcoat,  he  wore  a 
yellow  jersey  or  sweater  of  pale  yellow  silk.  This 
garment  might  have  been  affected  to  convey  the  idea 
that  he  was  what  he  would  have  called  "  a  rough 
diamond,"  or  "  one  of  Nature's  noblemen,"  but  it 
failed  because  it  was  quite  immaculate,  because  his 
Norfolk  jacket  was  clearly  fresh  from  the  pressing- 
iron  and  because  van  Houyz's  face  completed  the 
denial.  He  had  astutely  hidden  as  much  of  it  as 
he  could  by  combing  far  over  his  forehead  his  curl 
ing  black  hair  and  by  cultivating — there  is  no  other 
word  for  it — a  curling  brown  black;  yet  his  piscatory 
eyes  shot  through  this  mask,  his  nose  was  long  and 
thin,  and  when  he  smiled — as  he  was  continuously 
doing — one  saw  that  his  upper  lip  was  curiously  thin 
and  his  lower  curiously  thick.  He  had  his  arm — too 
tightly,  Edith  thought — around  the  shoulder  of  a 
woman  that  patently  felt  proud  of  this  attention,  a 
woman  whose  most  notable  feature  was  her  teeth: 
there  were  too  many  of  them  and  they  had  been  care 
lessly  arranged. 

To  avoid  expressing  an  opinion,  Edith  directed 
Diana's  attention  elsewhere. 


I42  JIM 

"  Who's  that  man  sitting  in  this  hot  room  with  an 
ulster  on  and  its  collar  turned  up  above  his  ears?  " 

"That's  George  Andre,"  said  Diana.  "He's 
French :  he's  from  Alsace.  He  used  to  have  an  s 
in  the  end  of  his  first  name  and  an  accent  on  the  e 
of  his  last;  but  Archibald  simplified  them  for  him. 
He's  a  Syndicalist." 

"What's  a  Syndicalist?"  Charley  asked. 

Diana  hesitated  for  but  the  fraction  of  a  second. 

"  A  Syndicalist,"  she  explained,  "  is  a  person  that 
believes  in  Syndicalism." 

"  And  what's  Syndicalism?  "  urged  Charley. 

Diana's  answer  was  to  indicate  another  Radical. 

"There's  Dorsey  Dutton,"  she  said.  "He's  a 
poet." 

Probably  nobody  ever  had  the  courage  to  "  do  " 
George  IV  of  England  in  stained  glass,  but,  if  any 
body  had,  that  George  IV  would  have  resembled  this 
tympanismic  revolutionist.  He  was  proudly  exhibit 
ing  his  courageous  radicalism  by  sitting  in  the  door 
way  to  the  anteroom  with  a  diminutive  girl,  a 
brunette,  perched  on  his  knee.  Their  relative  sizes 
suggested  that  her  relation  to  him  was  that  of  the 
tiny  cherub  which  one  sometimes  sees  carved  at  the 
feet  of  the  recumbent  figure  on  a  royal  tomb.  Be 
hind  this  pair  stood  a  young  man  in  a  stock;  he  had 
an  intellectual  forehead  and  was  palpably  bored. 

"  And  that  one's  the  editor  of  a  revolutionary 
paper,"  said  Diana,  "  and  he  thinks  himself  above 
all  of  us.  But  don't  bother  about  him.  Come  over 
here:  I  want  you  to  meet  Archibald  and  Sylvia." 

Van  Houyz  had  belonged  to  the  Radical  Club 
since  the  latter  half  of  its  Union  Square  days;  he  was 


JIM  143 

a  part  of  the  institution,  and  paying  members  had  a 
right  to  as  much  of  himself  as  he  could  give  them: 
he,  therefore,  stood  with  a  much  bestockinged  leg 
planted  on  a  chair-bottom  for  their  delectation. 
Sylvia,  the  girl  with  the  assertive  teeth,  was  looking 
up  into  his  piscatory  eyes.  With  Charley  he  shook 
hands  limply:  he  did  not  like  men,  nor  did  men  like 
him.  Edith's  extended  hand  he  took  in  both  his 
own. 

"  It  is  so  sweet  to  meet  you,"  he  said.  "  We've 
all  been  hearing  of  how  much  you've  done  for  Prin 
ciple.  Do  you  mind  my  saying  that  you  oughtn't 
to  wear  quills  in  your  hat?  In  the  first  place,  they 
entail  cruelty  to  birds,  and  in  the  second,  you  have 
such  an  interesting  face  that  you  ought  to  wear  only 
the  most  unostentatious  clothes  in  order  not  to  de 
tract  attention  from  it."  He  twirled  his  beard. 
"  Let  it  stand  out,"  he  said — "  out,  you  know." 

He  had  scarcely  nodded  to  Diana;  now  he  seemed 
to  have  forgotten  Sylvia.  They  all  sat  in  the  front 
row  of  chairs,  and  van  Houyz  pressed  his  body  close 
to  Edith's.  It  occurred  to  her  that  here  was  one  of 
those  who  think  that  a  divorcee  of  one  husband  is  a 
willing  prey  to  all  men.  She  hated  van  Houyz. 

Charley  was  talking  in  a  loud  voice  to  Sylvia,  who 
needed  consolation. 

"  I  was  in  Peking  during  the  Boxer  troubles,"  he 
was  saying;  "  and  one  night " 

Edith  knew  the  story.  She  noticed  that  one  of 
a  pair  of  men  behind  her  was  more  interested  in 
it  than  was  Sylvia.  The  story  was  not  complete  when 
Diana  was  introduced  by  an  informal  chairman  and 
began  speaking. 


144  JIM 

"  Fatherhood,"  she  said,  and  impressively  paused. 
"  We  all  know  the  so-called  duties  with  which  men 
bolster  up  this  man-imposed  Right.  We  also  are 
well  aware  of  the  inutility  of  it,  under  present  con 
ditions,  as  a  profession.  Where  is  the  typical  fa 
ther,  during  the  waking  hours  of  his  offspring?  Is 
he  at  home?  Does  he  give  the  benefit  of  his  con 
stant  care  and  superior  knowledge?  Is  it  from  him 
that  the  little  one  imbibes  the  rudiments  of  eating 
and  walking,  and  is  it  to  him  that  it  lisps  its  first 
prattling  sentences?  Who  teaches  it  to  call  him 
Daddy?  You  must  all  agree  with  me  that  Father 
hood  in  sta]tu  quo  is  shorn  of  the  glory  of  responsi 
bility  and  is  one  of  the  most  futile  and  undignified 
of  trades." 

She  spoke  in  a  conversational  tone,  pausing  now 
and  again  to  choose  her  words,  but  it  was  a  question 
if  her  cultivation  of  the  impromptu  method,  her  pose 
of  negligence,  were  not  arranged  to  make  more 
startling — for  she  obviously  thought  them  startling 
— the  things  that  she  had  to  say.  She  was  follow 
ing  van  Houyz's  advice  about  Edith's  clothes  and 
forbidding  the  grace  of  her  phrases  to  divert  atten 
tion  from  the  meat  of  her  ideas.  She  was  serious 
and,  had  she  not  nervously  held  her  head  in  a  man 
ner  reminiscent  of  the  late  Cardinal  Newman,  would 
have  remained  handsome. 

''  There  ought  to  be  nothing  startling  in  doing 
away  with  inefficient  fathers — I  mean,  in  fatherhood 
under  its  present  enthralled  conditions,"  she  went 
on.  Her  voice  was  really  beautiful,  and  well  modu 
lated.  "  When  the  Plan  was  adumbrated  to  me  by 
Archibald  van  Houyz,  /  wasn't  startled.  Individual 


JIM  145 

fathers  will,  in  the  end,  become  Group  Fathers,  giv 
ing  up  their  children  to  the  mothers  or  to  the  state, 
since  they  do  not  seem  fitted  to  the  entire  care  of 
them — the  wisdom  of  mother  or  state  has  not  yet 
been  definitely  settled — and,  by  Co-operation,  by 
working  together  for  the  common  good  of  the  on 
coming  generation,  improve  with  concerted  intelli 
gence  economic  and  educational  conditions  and  make 
of  Fatherhood  a  thing  even  to  be  proud  of.  I  am 
quite  hopeful  that  our  Legislature  in  Albany  will 
soon  be  brought  to  consider  this  vital  subject  seri 
ously,  for  the  laxity  with  which  it  has  lately  been 
regarded  has  already  caused  a  baby-strike." 

Charley  scowled  at  Edith.  One  of  the  men  be 
hind  him  laughed:  the  laugh  asked  whether  Char 
ley  suspected  his  wife  of  connubial  sabotage.  Edith 
blushed  and  drew  back,  but  felt  herself  thus  ap 
proaching  closer  to  van  Houyz  and  bent  forward 
again. 

Diana  was  going  on : 

".  .  .  .  for  that  matter.  The  decreasing  birth 
rate  screams  prophetically.  One  Type  says :  '  It's 
nothing  but  a  small  circle  of  selfish  women  among 
the  very  rich  who  refuse  to  become  mothers  be 
cause  it  keeps  them  from  playing  Bridge.'  The 
Capitalistic  Press  puts  the  blame  on  poverty  and 
the  poor.  Preachers  call  it  Minds  arid  of  Religion. 
What  are  we  to  believe?  How  about  the  wives 
and  possible  mothers  who  are  Professional  Women? 
These  women  cannot  be  called  idle;  they  do  not 
come  under  the  Capitalistic  Press's  category;  nor 
are  their  minds  always  arid  of  Religion. 

"  For  my  part,  I  call  the  Professional  Woman  just 


146  JIM 

responsive  to  the  Spirit  of  the  Times.  She  doesn't 
want  to  sacrifice  her  utility  to  the  Whole  to  her 
utility  to  the  Few.  Fatherhood  inflicts  penalties  on 
Motherhood  in  the  case  of  the  Professional  Type. 
I  speak  particularly  of  the  Professional  Type,  which 
modern  fathers  would  make  into  house-drudges, 
nursery-governesses,  and  dish-washers.  You  know 
what  the  simple  result  is,  and,  for  my  part,  I  blame 
the  fathers:  the  typical  Professional  Woman  does 
not  have  children." 

When  Charley  saw  that  the  speaker's  revelations 
were  to  deal  with  professional  women,  he  dismissed 
his  suspicions  of  Edith  and  lost  interest  in  this  part 
of  the  speech.  He  thought  such  subjects  as  Diana 
had  chosen  ought  never  to  be  discussed  in  mixed 
company;  but  even  the  pleasant  sense  of  listening  to 
something  improper  did  not  long  sustain  him.  He 
folded  his  arms  and,  chin  on  breast,  fell  asleep. 
Presently  he  snored.  Edith  nudged  him  sharply. 
The  man  behind  laughed  again,  and  Charley 
started. 

".  .  .  nor  stop  there,"  Diana  was  continuing. 
"  Now,  what  is  the  duty  of  the  state?  Mothers  are 
being  yearly  discouraged  by  the  heedless  attitude  of 
the  state  and  of  fathers.  It  is  the  plain  duty  of  the 
state,  in  order  to  protect  the  future  of  the  race, 
to  pay  a  salary  to  mothers  and  make  of  Fatherhood 
a  useful  profession. 

"  Mormonism  has  worked  out  its  problem  of 
plural  marriages.  So  long  as  the  country  was 
rugged  and  labor  extravagant,  wives  in  group-form 
and  children  in  the  mass  were  an  economic  asset  in 
stead  of  a  liability.  Now  manufactures  have  re- 


JIM  147 

placed  agriculture :  it  is  an  expense  to  keep  wives 
and  rear  children.  There  need  have  been  no  legis 
lation  to  prove  to  the  Mormons  that  plural  mar 
riages  do  not  now  pay.  What  Mormonism  has 
done,  we  can  do.  The  time  has  come.  The  modern 
father  cannot  much  longer  remain  the  pater  familias 
of  the  Mormon  Church,  as  it  were.  He  must  yield 
to  the  Call  of  the  Century:  he  must  become  a  use 
ful  Member  of  Society." 

Charley  wriggled  in  his  chair. 

"  Is  it  fair,"  asked  Diana,  with  flushed  cheeks, 
"  for  the  mother  to  bear  all  the  burden  of  this 
training?  When  shall  the  father  do  his  share? 
When  shall  Fatherhood  bend  its  concentrated  at 
tention  to  the  Finished  Product  of  the  Future 
Generation?  " 

Only  an  angry  glance  from  Edith  stopped  Char 
ley  in  the  midst  of  a  broad  yawn.  He  was  fidgeting 
painfully.  At  last  he  could  sit  still  no  longer.  "  Ex 
cuse  me  a  minute,"  he  said  to  Sylvia  Tytus  and  hur 
ried  out  to  get  a  drink. 

"  What  is  the  remedy?  "  Diana  proceeded.  "  The 
remedy  is  that  discovered  by  Archibald  van  Houyz 
and  Bernard  Shaw:  it  is  Subsidized  Fatherhood. 
According  to  van  Houyz's  Plan,  we  should  have  a 
law  to  force  the  father  to  bear  precisely  half  the 
burden  of  the  rearing  of  the  child.  That  is,  the 
working-hours  of  the  day  would  be  evenly  divided, 
and  Fatherhood  would  assume  its  share  of  the  re 
sponsibilities  of  the  Home.  Finally,  van  Houyz's 
Plan  would  provide  for  some  type  of  salaried  Fa 
therhood,  under  which  prospective  fathers  would  be 
examined  and  certified  and,  on  proving  the  per- 


148  JIM 

formance  of  their  duties,  be  paid  therefor  by  the 
State  which  they  have  thus  benefited.  The  same 
course  would  be  followed  with  regard  to  mothers, 
and  each  parent  would  be  compelled  to  contribute 
a  tithe  of  the  joint  weekly  income  for  the  future 
use — not  the  present  needs — of  the  offspring:  a  sort 
of  savings-bank  account  would  be  opened.  In  this 
way,  when  the  boy  became  a  father,  he  would  have 
something  on  which  to  start  a  household,  and  when 
the  girl  became  a  mother  she  would  be  automatically 
compensated  " — Diana  repeated  that  phrase — "  Au 
tomatically  Compensated  for  her  Quondam  Eco 
nomic  Dependence." 

It  was  evident  that  Miss  Wentworth  was' 
approaching  the  climax  of  her  address.  Coming 
suddenly  in  the  calm  flow  of  an  informal  talk, 
"  Automatically  Compensated  for  her  Quondam 
Economic  Dependence  "  was  like  the  thunder  that 
presages  storm.  The  Radical  Club  cocked  its  ears, 
and  cocked  them  not  in  vain,  for  Diana,  with  her  chin 
thrust  even  farther  forward  now  than  the  Cardi 
nal's,  concluded: 

"  Van  Houyz  doesn't  propose  that  the  State 
should  take  over  complete  charge  of  the  children. 
It  is  his  theory  that  its  parents  can  do  for  a  child 
what  no  one  else  can,  and  that  even  Fatherhood  can 
become  useful  from  an  altruistic  and  economic  stand 
point.  What  he  proposes  is  that  trained  experts 
appointed  by  the  state  should  help  the  father,  at 
least  at  first,  to  the  realization  and  comprehension 
of  his  true  responsibilities.  And  all  this  he  pro 
poses — all  this  vast  Plan — in  the  knowledge  that  the 
free  union  of  a  man  and  a  woman  can  become  effi- 


JIM  149 

cient  only  when  Motherhood  and  Fatherhood  be 
come  twin  glories  and  when  the  woman  is  not  Eco 
nomically  Dependent  on  the  man." 

The  man  behind  Charley's  empty  seat  was  inquir 
ing  of  his  friend: 

"  How  about  when  the  man's  economically  what- 
d'-you-call-it  on  the  woman?  " 

Scarcely  anybody  heeded  this:  all  the  new  lot  of 
members  were  applauding  their  protagonist,  even 
the  newer  lot  were  in  startled  agreement  with  her, 
and  the  newest  were  still  too  polite  to  interfere. 
Edith,  however,  listened.  The  only  effect  the  speech 
had  had  on  her  was  to  weary  her  without  lessening 
her  personal  regard  for  the  speaker.  She  condemned 
Diana's  ideas,  she  condemned  all  ideas  that  were 
new  to  her,  as  absurd;  but  she  condemned  Charley, 
in  absentia,  more  severely  for  having  manifested  a 
weariness  which  she  had  been  at  pains  to  conceal. 
Without  a  word,  a  woman  can  convey  to  any  man, 
even  to  such  a  man  as  van  Houyz,  her  aversion  for 
him:  Edith  had  finally  impressed  hers  on  the  phi 
losopher,  and  he  was  again  caressing  Sylvia  Tytus. 
There  was  nobody  to  talk  to,  and  so  she  listened  to 
the  men  behind  her,  much  as  she  had  listened  to 
chance  talk  at  Miss  Smyser's  tea:  what  she  heard 
was  as  disconcerting  as  what  she  had  heard  from 
the  two  artist-women  at  "  The  Beatrice." 

"  Let's  beat  it,"  said  one  man.  "  That's  the  whole 
show.  There's  no  story  in  it."- -They  were  evidently 
newspaper-reporters. 

"  You  never  can  tell,"  said  the  other.  "  It's  a 
queer  gang:  something's  liable  to  break  loose  any 
time.  They  all  talked  free  love  last  week." 


150  JIM 

"What?  These  male  old-maids?  Do  they  be 
lieve  in  free  love?  " 

"  Of  course  they  do.  It's  so  cheap,  you  see.  Oh, 
they're  a  thrifty  lot,  even  if  they  are  only  the  foam 
on  the  beer." 

"  All  right,  then,  let's  blow  off  the  foam  and  get 
some  real  beer,  like  our  friend  that  went  out.  Did 
you  ever  see  '  Secret  Drunkard  '  written  over  a  man 
as  large  as  it  was  written  over  him?  " 

The  second  man  snorted. 

"  Said  he  was  in  Peking  during  the  Boxer  trou 
bles,"  he  sneered.  "  He's  seeing  things.  I  was  there 
through  the  whole  rumpus — went  out  for  our  sheet, 
got  shut  up  and  couldn't  get  away.  By  the  time  it 
was  over,  I  knew  every  white  man  in  the  city  well 
enough  to  call  him  by  his  first  name  and  borrow  his 
spare  pyjamas — and  this  fellow  wasn't  any  more 
there  than  the  office-cat." 

§  6.  Charley  was  beckoning  to  her  from  a  distant 
doorway.  She  joined  him  there:  his  breath  was 
heavy  with  whisky,  and  his  face  was  purple. 

"  Don't  let's  wait  D'ana,"  he  said,  thickly.  "  'M 
ashamed  of  her."  He  wagged  his  head.  "  I  know," 
he  said.  "  Been  standin'  here  doorway.  Don't  you 
ever  come  here  again.  *  Baby-strikes ! ' — An'  *  free 
unions.'  I'n't  marriage  good  'nough  for  her?  I 
know  what  she  means  all  right,  all  right.  D'ana's 
not  a  fit  person  f  my  wife  'sociate  with.  Come  on 
home." 


NINTH  CHAPTER 

THEY  were  nothing  new  to  her,  the  things  that 
the  reporter  had  said.  Having  heard  them, 
she  realized  that  they  had  for  some  time  been 
darkening  the  background  of  her  consciousness. 
But  the  reporter  had  brought  them  forward.  Though 
they  would  have  troubled  her  grievously  had  she 
thought  them  hers  alone,  their  hurt  could  have  been 
nothing  to  what  it  was  now  that  she  knew  them 
to  be  visible  to  the  passing  stranger.  It  was  not 
enough  that  she  have  a  secret  shame:  her  shame 
must  become  a  public  betrayal;  her  pride  must  suf 
fer  with  her  heart. 

She  could  not  bring  herself  to  speak  at  once  to 
Charley;  at  least  for  the  present,  her  loathing  of 
his  condition  was  too  strong:  she  did  not  dare  to 
open  her  lips  for  fear  of  what  might  pass  them.  She 
had  seen  him  before  made  merry  by  drink,  made 
sanguine,  made  affectionate,  and  these  manifesta 
tions  had  been,  on  the  whole,  welcome.  To-night 
he  had  reached  a  later  stage  of  the  alcoholic,  and 
for  the  first  time  she  had  an  appreciation  of  what 
those  earlier  stages  meant,  of  how  they  led  to  this 
one,  of  how  the  earlier  could  less  and  less  frequently 
be  regained.  All  the  way  back  to  their  sordid  home, 
she  let  him  uninterruptedly  maunder  to  her;  when 
he  thickly  demanded  a  reply,  she  made  none;  when 
he  accepted  her  silence  as  a  confession  of  some  sort 
of  guilt  that  he  felt  more  deeply  than  he  could  de- 

151 


JIM 

fine,  she  held  her  tongue.  She  let  him  run  on  while 
he  clumsily  undressed  and  when  he  tumbled  into 
bed  beside  her.  She  got  up,  put  out  the  light  that 
he  had  forgotten  to  extinguish,  lay  down  again  and 
remained  dumb  while  his  monotonous  voice  babbled 
into  sleep,  came  back,  stumbled,  ended  in  a  final 
snore. 

He  lay  there  sodden  and  stertorous.  His  breath 
was  foul.  It  was  a  cold  night,  and  with  his  first 
drowsiness  he  had  dragged  the  blankets  about  him 
self,  leaving  her  shivering. 

She  was  awake  for  the  better  part  of  the  night, 
wondering  what  she  should  do  in  the  morning,  and 
on  all  the  mornings  that  were  to  follow.  What 
should  she  say  to  him?  Of  what  use  could  any 
words  be?  If  he  was  a  drunkard,  her  upbraidings, 
even  her  appeals,  would  only  drive  him  forward  to 
more  drink:  she  confirmed  that  by  recalling  a  dozen 
past  experiences  with  him,  imperfectly  apprehended 
then,  now  nakedly  revealed.  If  he  was  a  liar  and 
a  lying  braggart — there  is  no  other  kind  of  brag 
gart — that  was  a  thing  done,  not  to  be  changed: 
he  had  committed  himself  to  his  lies  with  his  every 
acquaintance.  Her  untrained  mind  followed  no 
course  of  logical  reasoning:  it  darted  back  and  forth 
among  the  strands  of  the  web  that  had  caught  it. 
Everybody  that  they  knew  he  had  made  familiar 
with  his  lies;  but  did  everybody — did  anybody,  ex 
cept  that  reporter — suspect  them  to  be  lies?  She 
found  her  pride  basely  forced  to  share  in  his  decep 
tions;  to  bolster  them;  to  hide  them;  if  need  should 
be,  to  brazen  them  out  beside  him.  Perhaps  only 
a  few  people  guessed;  perhaps — people  were  abom- 


JIM  153 

inably,  sneakingly  polite,  but  perhaps  not  many  knew 
of  his  drunkenness.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  did 
guess.  .  .  . 

She  wheeled  back  to  hatred  of  him.  The  fault 
that  a  wife  has  detected  in  her  husband  needs  but 
its  recognition  by  a  stranger  to  become  unendurable 
to  her.  She  looked  at  the  loudly  heaving  mass  of 
covers  that  lay  so  close  beside  her.  A  passing  train 
on  the  elevated-railway  drowned  his  snores,  but  lit 
up  his  puffed  and  swollen  face  as  by  a  lightning- 
flash.  It  was  stupefied,  horrible. 

It  was  pitiful,  too.  Quite  unreasoningly  she  re 
alized  that,  and  immediately  realized  nothing  else. 
She  had  staked  so  much  on  him;  he  was  the  hand 
she  had  dealt  herself  in  the  game  of  life;  she  could 
not  afford  to  put  it  down  and  retire;  she  had  to  bet 
on  it  all  that  remained  to  her.  After  all,  the  force 
that  had  wrought  these  things  in  Charley  was  a 
force  created  by  his  love  for  her.  If  he  had  lied, 
he  had  lied  to  win  her;  if  he  drank,  it  was  for 
strength  to  bear  the  hardships  imposed  by  the  re 
sults  of  his  love  for  her.  This  was  Jim's  work:  if 
Charley  and  she  had  met  when  she  was  free,  none 
of  these  troubles  would  have  come  upon  them;  if 
Jim  had  not  married  her,  Charley's  father  would 
have  received  her  in  his  house,  poverty  would  not 
have  so  much  as  touched  them,  no  living  soul  would 
have  dreamed  that  their  intimacy  was  once  illicit. 
The  darkness  was  hiding  his  face  again,  and  she 
could  remember  that  she  loved  him. 

Had  he  lied?  What  proof  was  there  that  he  had 
lied?  The  sneering  word  of  an  unknown  news 
paper-reporter,  a  man  whose  face  she  had  not  even 


I54  JIM 

seen.  Why  was  it  not  the  reporter  that  was  brag 
gart  and  liar?  She  felt  ashamed  that  she  had 
doubted  Charley.  ...  As  soon  as  his  father  died, 
this  hideous  strain  would  be  over,  and  with  the 
need  of  liquor  the  use  of  it  would  end.  .  .  .  She 

would  say  nothing,  do  nothing  until 

She  fell  asleep.  She  did  not  waken  until  ten 
o'clock,  and  then  she  found  that  Charley  had  got 
up  and  gone  breakfastless  to  his  office. 

§  2.  He  came  back  late,  having  postponed  his  return 
to  the  last  possible  minute.  He  had  taken,  on  the 
way  home,  enough  whisky  to  steady  his  shaken 
nerves,  but  he  looked  ill,  and,  though  firm  in  his 
denunciation  of  the  Radical  Club,  he  was  abjectly 
penitent  for  his  drunkenness. 

"  It  was  Jim  that  got  me  started  drinking,"  he 
said.  "  Think  of  that:  Jim!  I  never  drank  a  drop 
till  he  taught  me.  He  was  always  saying  a  whole 
man  could  be  temperate.  A  whole  man!  He  meant 
a  man  like  himself,  a  man  without  any  red  blood 
in  his  veins !  " 

Edith  felt  a  savage  joy  in  Jim  as  a  scapegoat. 

"Of  course  he  did,"  she  agreed:  "a  man  like 
that  can  always  stop  when  he's  had  enough.  He 
was  always  as  cold  as  an  icicle." 

They  talked  of  Jim  for  some  time.  It  eased 
them. 

"  Still,"  said  Charley  at  last,  "  I'd  cut  out  Diana 
if  I  were  you,  dear.  A  woman  with  her  ideas  isn't 
fit  company  for  you,  you  know." 

Edith  did  not  like  Diana's  loose  opinions  of  mar- 


JIM  155 

riage,  but  she  liked  Diana :  Diana  was  her  one  re 
maining  friend. 

"  I  haven't  anybody  else  left,"  she  pointed  out. 

"  Oh,  well  " — Charley  wriggled  his  shoulders — 
"you'll  find  others,  and,  once  the  luck  turns  for  us, 
you  can  take  your  pick.  Drop  her.  I  would.  We 
have  each  other,  after  all." 

§  3.  It  was  a  beautiful  April.  The  days  were  full 
of  an  invigorating  sunshine,  and  the  nights  full  of 
stars.  With  every  sunrise,  the  Spring-longing 
tugged  harder  and  harder  at  Edith's  heart.  Some 
times  it  strained  in  her  throat,  sobbed  in  it.  The 
passion  that  had  seized  her  in  the  Italian  restaurant 
would  not  abate.  She  wanted  to  be  free;  she  wanted 
to  dance. 

Charley  borrowed  more  money  from  Mame,  and 
they  dined  nightly  at  some  third-rate  cafe;  but  never 
—for  he  made  his  choice  carefully — at  one  where 
there  was  dancing.  They  came  to  know  these  res 
taurants — which  flourish  in  the  New  York  side- 
streets  for  the  relief  from  fatal  tedium  of  all  third- 
rate  New  Yorkers — as  thoroughly  as  the  inventor 
knew  the  parts  of  his  invention.  The  cafes  are 
really  as  tedious  as  are  the  lives  of  those  that  seek 
variety  in  them,  but  theirs  is  a  different  kind  of 
tedium,  and  Edith  and  Charley  enjoyed  it.  They 
were  authorities.  They  were  speedily  connoisseurs 
of  the  strange  food  that  was  served  with  sharp 
sauces  and  of  the  thin  wines  that  puckered  their 
mouths  with  an  astringency  that  they  called  dryness. 
They  kept  it  up  until  Charley's  digestion  began  to 
suffer. 


i56  JIM 

At  one  of  these  places  they  had,  one  evening,  to 
wait  for  a  table,  and  Edith,  in  the  shoddy  reception- 
room,  picked  up  the  current  number  of  a  popular 
magazine.  It  contained  several  full-page  reproduc 
tions  of  paintings  in  an  exhibition  lately  opened, 
and  one  of  these  caught  her  eye. 

It  was  the  picture  of  a  man  and  woman  dancing 
the  tango.  They  were  in  modern  dress,  and  the 
treatment  was  far  from  commonplace  or  conven 
tional,  but  Edith  liked  it  because  the  artist  had 
caught  and  conveyed,  so  that  even  she  could  feel 
it,  the  movement  and  spirit  of  the  subject.  Al 
though  the  figures  were  indicated  rather  than  de 
lineated,  she  realized  the  presence  of  the  man's  arm 
about  the  girl,  the  touch  of  hand  to  hand,  of  thigh 
to  thigh;  she  felt  the  music  and  knew  the  rhythm. 
It's  perfect  response  to  her  mood  made  her  forget 
her  husband's  objections  to  the  form  of  dance  that 
it  celebrated,  and  she  was  about  to  hand  the  maga 
zine  to  Charley  for  his  approbation  of  the  picture 
when  she  saw  the  legend  printed  beneath  it: 

" TANGO  " 

"  This  painting,  which  is  attracting  more  atten 
tion  from  both  critics  and  public  than  any  other  in 
the  exhibition,  is  a  mighty  argument  for  those  who 
maintain  that  the  '  New  Dancing '  is  a  graceful  and 
beautiful  art.  The  fortunate  painter  is  James 
Trent." 

So  Jim's  work  had  attained  that  summit  of  suc 
cess,  reproduction  in  the  ten-cent  magazines !  She 
closed  the  book  hurriedly  and  held  it,  lest  Charley 
should  see  it.  If  Charley  saw  it,  he  would  be  too 


JIM  157 

angry  to  enjoy  his  dinner.  She  knew  what  he  would 
say  ("  Tango — just  the  rotten  right  thing  for  a  man 
like  that  to  paint!  "),  and  she  did  not  want  to  hear 
him  say  it.  She  felt  that  the  picture  had  tricked 
her  into  her  admiration  of  it,  and  that  Jim  had  no 
right  to  paint  a  dance  that  she  wanted  to  practice 
and  was  forbidden.  "  The  fortunate  painter !  "  He 
was  trying  hard  to  make  himself  famous,  and  no 
doubt  his  chief  incentive  was  a  knowledge  that  his 
fame  would  annoy  her.  Probably  he  had  a  similar 
incentive  for  escaping  fame  while  she  remained  his 
wife.  It  would  be  just  like  him.  He  had  remained 
unsuccessful  in  order  to  hurt  her;  in  order  to  hurt 
her,  he  became  successful.  Well,  there  was  one  con 
solation:  he  could  not  keep  up  his  success. — What 
was  Charley  saying? 

He  was  saying: 

"  The  postman  was  at  the  door  when  I  came  home 
this  evening.  He  had  this  letter  for  you.  I  forgot 
it.  I'm  sorry." 

The  thought  of  Jim  had  set  her  nerves  on  edge: 
she  snatched  the  letter.  It  was  a  printed  letter,  and 
it  was  headed: 

THE  LEEG  FOR  WIMMINISM 

(No  Conexshun  With  Enny  Femminist 
Asosiashuns) 

Wimminism  is  a  filosofie  witch  rekognizes 
Wumun  as  the  Life-Giffer  and  demands  that 
therefor  she  be  the  Life-Rooler! — Ower 
Leeg  insists  on  this  Ateenth  Amendment  to 
the  Kontzteetooshun  of  the  United  States: 
"  No  rite,  sivil  or  polytik,  shal  be  denied 
to  enny  person  on  akownt  of  sex." 


i$8  JIM 

"What  is  it?"  asked  Charley. 

Edith,  her  anger  gone,  was  puckering  her  brows 
over  it  and  trying  to  guess  the  words  by  framing 
them  with  her  lips. 

"  I  can't  exactly  make  it  out,"  she  said.  "  I  think 
it's  simplified  spelling." 

She  handed  the  letter  to  Charley. 

The  letter  announced  van  Houyz,  Sylvia  Tytus, 
and  Diana  Wentworth  as  the  Leeg's  officers — with 
out  simplifying  their  names — and  announced  the  ex 
istence  of  kommitties  on  the  filosofie  of  Wimmin- 
ism,  art-dress,  publisity,  mekanick  baysis  of  Wim- 
minism,  Sivik  Staytus  of  Mutherhud,  and  a  dozen 
other  subjects,  concluding  with  one  on  Wumun's 
Rite  to  Retane  her  one  Name  wen  Married. 

"One  name?"  read  Charley.  "What  one's 
that?" 

Edith  had  crossed  to  him  and  was  looking  over 
his  shoulder. 

"  Perhaps  that's  their  way  of  spelling  '  own,'  ' 
she  suggested. 

"  And  what  do  they  want  with  you?" 

They  wanted  her,  it  was  with  difficulty  deciphered, 
to  join  the  Leeg. 

"  Well,  I  won't  have  it,"  said  Charley.  "  I  won't 
have  my  wife  mixing  herself  up  with  a  lot  of  scan 
dalous  lunatics.  Their  spelling's  worse  than  their 
opinions.  W-u-m-u-n !  That  sort  of  craziness 
might  be  catching." 

Edith  had  not  the  least  desire  to  join.  She 
glanced  again  at  the  text  of  the  letter. 

"  They  spell  one  sound  one  way  in  one  word  and 
another  way  in  another,"  she  noted.  "  And  they 


JIM  159 

mispronounce  so  many  words.  If  people  must  spell 
phonetically,  why  don't  they  phoneticize  the  correct 
pronunciation  rather  than  the  incorrect?" 

That  phrase  slipped  from  her  without  thought. 
At  the  end  of  it  she  caught  her  breath:  it  was  some 
thing  that  Jim  had  once  said. 

She  never  did  tell  Charley  about  the  picture. 

§  4.  She  could  no  longer  keep  her  eyes  closed  to 
the  change  in  Charley.  His  fat  was  unhealthy,  his 
expression  fixed.  His  habitual  chuckle  had  lost  its 
old  assertiveness,  and  he  was  becoming  dirty  in  his 
personal  habits.  Nobody  would  invest  in  the 
sounder,  and  the  elder  Vanaman  would  not  die. 

"  I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if  he  saw  the  last  of 
all  of  us,"  she  would  sometimes  say. 

In  her  Charley  noticed  the  occasionally  recurring 
carelessness  of  her  clothes. 

'  You  ought  to  spruce  up  a  bit,"  he  told  her. 
'  You  used  to  look  swell." 

She  turned  on  him  quickly. 

'  Yes,"  she  said — "  when  I  was  Jim's  wife.  I 
had  some  money  then.  You  know,  as  well  as  I  do, 
he  used  to  give  me  all  the  money  he  made." 

"  I  know  he  was  a  fool." 

"  He  had  that  good  point,  anyhow,"  said  Edith. 

But  she  went  on  hating  Jim. 

On  a  particularly  bright  afternoon,  when  the 
sunshine  wooed  her  and  the  light  airs  lied  to  her, 
she  had  been  wondering  whether  there  was  not  some 
just  ground  for  Charley's  criticism  of  her  dress, 
whether  she  was  really  doing  so  well  in  the  matter 


160  JIM 

of  clothes  as  she  could  do  on  the  money  that  was 
spared  her.  She  went  to  the  shops,  determined  to 
do  better. 

Her  disappointment  was  keen.  Everything  that 
she  wanted  was  far  beyond  her  means.  She  walked 
along  many  miles  of  counters  and  corridors  that  dis 
played  but  two  sorts  of  things:  the  sort  she  would 
not  wear  and  the  sort  she  could  not  buy. 

It  was  when  she  came  out  of  the  last  shop  that 
she  remembered  the  picture  called  "  Tango,"  the 
picture  by  Jim,  of  which  she  had  seen  a  reproduc 
tion  in  the  magazine  at  the  restaurant.  She  did  not 
know  what  made  her  remember  it;  it  seemed  to  her 
that  nothing  made  her  remember  it,  that  the  impres 
sion  of  this  picture  was  an  entity  with  a  life  of  its 
own  inherited  from  the  artist,  which  had  passed 
into  her  brain,  lain  for  a  few  days  dormant  there, 
and  was  now  malignantly  asserting  itself,  was  actu 
ally  assuming  at  least  temporary  possession. 

For  she  felt,  quite  suddenly,  that  she  must  see 
the  original.  She  tried  to  tell  herself  that  she  wanted 
to  see  it  in  order  to  satisfy  herself  that  it  was  really 
a  meretricious  piece  of  work,  which  had  caught  the 
popular  fancy  merely  because  it  had  cleverly  ap 
pealed  to  the  spirit  of  a  passing  fashion;  but  she 
knew  that  this  was  not  the  reason  for  her  desire. 
She  wondered  if  the  reason  was  the  influence  of  Jim; 
but  she  denied  that  Jim  possessed  any  influence  over 
her.  Then  she  thought  that  the  picture's  fascination 
for  her  might  lie  in  its  presentation  of  a  dance  in 
which  she  was  interested  and  in  all  the  freedom,  the 
successful  joy,  that  this  dance,  since  it  was  denied 
her,  had  come  to  symbolize;  but  she  denied  that,  too, 


JIM  161 

though  she  could  find  no  convincing  argument  for 
this  denial. 

All  the  while  she  was  walking  toward  the  hall 
in  which  the  magazine  had  said  that  the  picture  was 
exhibited.  At  the  shops,  she  had  been  tired;  she 
was  tired  now;  but  she  walked  on. 

She  came  to  the  hall  and  went  in.  She  had  no 
trouble  in  finding  the  picture :  it  was  hung  in  the 
best  light  of  the  largest  room,  and  there  was  a  group 
of  people  about  it. 

The  reproduction  had  been  a  good  one,  but  the 
colors  gave  to  the  original  a  life  and  brightness  that 
the  reproduction  lacked.  ... 

Edith  heard  little  broken  sentences  of  approval 
from  the  group  about  the  picture.  Some  of  the  per 
sons  speaking  were  persons  that  seemed  to  know 
good  pictures;  others  seemed  to  know  good  danc 
ing.  One  man  among  the  admirers  crooked  his  bald 
head,  bent  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand  and  applied 
them  to  his  right  eye  as  if  they  were  a  miniature 
telescope.  He  spoke  in  crisp,  academic  sentences, 
which  he  meant  all  about  him  to  hear. 

"Alive,"  he  said:  "alive  with  grace,  movement, 
music.  The  artist  that  painted  it  must  have  under 
stood,  not  alone  the  rhythm  of  dancing,  but  also 
the  rhythm  of  life.  He  understood  them  and 
painted  them  here." 

To  -her  young  lover,  a  girl  in  the  group — a  girl 
in  clothes  somewhat  ahead  of  the  prevailing  fash 
ion — said  the  same  thing.  She  said: 

"  That's  some  tango,  that  is." 

Edith  had  never  hated  Jim  as  she  hated  him 
now.  .  . 


162  JIM 

On  her  way  to  her  Greenwich  Village  home, 
beside  which  the  drays  and  surface-cars  rattled  all 
day  long  and  the  trains  on  the  elevated-railway 
screamed  at  regular  intervals  all  night,  she  bought 
an  evening  newspaper  and  studied  the  advertise 
ments  that  followed  those  classified  as  "  Amuse 
ments."  She  counted  the  money  with  which  she  had 
been  unable  to  buy  clothes.  Charley  had  not  given 
her  all  of  it;  some  she  had  saved,  by  painful  denials 
and  awkward  subterfuges,  from  the  living-expenses 
that  he  allowed  her.  He  did  not  know  how  much 
it  was.  It  was  not  much;  it  would  not  go  far.  Nev 
ertheless,  she  decided  that,  without  telling  Charley, 
she  would  spend  it  for  as  many  tango-lessons  as  it 
would  buy. 


TENTH  CHAPTER 

FOR  months  past  Edith  had  been  eavesdrop 
ping  upon  everybody  about  her:  she  was  lis 
tening  for  the  things  she  did  not  want  to  hear. 
Nobody  puts  his  ear  at  a  keyhole  to  catch  pleasant 
words,  nor  does  anybody  so  placed  remember  such 
pleasant  words  as  chance  to  reach  him:  Edith  ap 
plied  her  ear  to  all  that  portion  of  the  conversation 
of  her  acquaintances  and  neighbors  which  was  not 
intended  for  her,  and  what  remained  in  her  memory 
was  precisely  so  much  as  displeased  her.  From  the 
day  when  she  had  a  secret,  she  began  to  fear  that 
other  people  would  suspect  it;  and  from  the  day 
when  she  feared  other  people  would  suspect  it,  she 
began  to  seek  confirmation  of  her  fears.  She  sought 
what  she  dreaded  to  discover. 

It  was,  however,  in  the  nature  of  Jim's  success 
that  some  of  the  news  of  it  should  reach  her  through 
the  designed  highways  of  publicity.  So  the  knowl 
edge  of  the  tango-picture  reached  her;  so  reached 
her,  on  the  morning  after  her  visit  to  the  exhibition, 
another  piece  of  knowledge. 

She  and  Charley  had  their  hurried  breakfasts — 
for  their  breakfasts  were  always  hurried — in  the 
living-room  that  looked  out  on  the  noisy  Greenwich 
Village  street.  Charley  would  waken  her  with  diffi 
culty,  urging  her  that  he  must  not  be  late  at  the 
office;  and  she  would  at  last  crawl  out  of  bed,  thrust 
her  stockingless  feet  into  slippers,  and  fling  about 

163 


1 64  JIM 

her  her  trailing  yellow  negligee,  now  stained  by  the 
preparation  of  many  breakfasts  previous  to  this  one. 
Her  hair  unbraided,  her  eyes  half  closed  by  sleep, 
she  would  light  the  gas-stove  and  boil  the  coffee 
and  eggs,  which  she  took  from  the  supply  kept  in 
the  cupboard  where  her  dresses  were  hung.  While 
she  was  at  this  task,  her  husband  would  grunt  his 
way  into  his  clothes  and  go  out  to  buy  a  newspaper 
at  the  corner,  generally  returning  with  the  traces  of 
a  morning  cocktail  on  his  breath.  He  would  glance 
at  the  chief  headlines  of  the  paper  on  his  way  up 
stairs  and  then,  when  he  sat  down  on  the  sofa  to 
eat  the  food  that  she  handed  him,  would  give  Edith 
the  paper  to  read  while  he  ate — for  they  economized 
on  newspapers  now,  the  understanding  being  that 
the  journal  was  to  be  surrendered  to  Charley  for 
his  further  study  on  his  way  to  work. 

This  is  what  happened  on  the  morning  following 
Edith's  sight  of  the  picture.  The  living-room,  as 
usual,  was  still  in  the  disorder  of  the  preceding  even 
ing  and  heavy  from  the  odors  of  the  night.  Clothes 
that  Edith  had  taken  off  at  twelve  o'clock  and  not 
yet  put  away  were  lying  across  chair-backs  with 
a  brazen  intimacy.  Charley,  fully  dressed,  was 
perched  on  the  edge  of  the  sofa,  ready  to  spring  for 
the  door  and  hurry  toward  his  office  as  soon  as  he 
should  have  gulped  the  last  mouthful  of  the  coffee 
that  he  perpetually  complained  of  because  it  was 
too  hot:  his  cheeks  had  now  lost  their  color;  they 
had  become  leathery,  and  there  were  heavy  bags  of 
darkened  skin  under  his  prominent  eyes.  Edith 
looked  her  age :  she  lolled  in  a  chair,  her  dressing- 
gown  falling  open  over  her  nightgown;  her  legs 


JIM  165 

crossed,  showing  a  bare  shin,  the  slipper  half  off 
the  raised  foot  and  moving  up  and  down  as  she 
closed  and  opened  her  toes  in  it:  she  pushed  her  hair 
away  from  her  face  and  held  the  newspaper  within 
an  inch  of  her  nose. 

She  turned  to  an  inside  page,  glanced  at  it,  gasped. 
The  paper  fell  into  her  lap. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "I  never!" 

Charley  looked  up,  his  cup  at  his  lips. 

"What's  wrong  now?"  he  asked. 

It  was  not  to  be  concealed  as  the  picture  in  the 
magazine  had  been.  He  had  to  have  his  newspaper 
to  read  in  the  subway;  could  she  have  kept  it  from 
him  without  arousing  his  suspicions,  she  would  not 
have  done  so,  for  this  was  news  of  an  importance 
that  demanded  communication.  Indeed,  she  did  not 
consider  suppression:  before  she  had  time  to  think 
at  all,  the  paragraph  she  had  seen  wrenched  from 
her  that  exclamation  in  the  forgotten  patois  of  her 
up-state  kindred.  She  handed  him  the  newspaper, 
indicating  with  her  forefinger  a  few  lines  in  the  de 
partment  called,  "What  Society  Is  Doing": 

'   Lu.a2'J.2_ 
JAMES  TRENT  MARRIED 

Rising  Young  Artist  Weds  Miss  Elizabeth 
Bowen 

Mr.  James  Trent,  the  rising  young  artist 
whose  portrait  of  Bishop  Peel  won  such 
praise  from  the  critics  last  winter,  was  yes 
terday  quietly  married  in  Trinity  Church, 
Philadelphia,  to  Miss  Elizabeth  Ord- 
way  Bowen,  only  daughter  of  Theodore 
Howard  Bowen,  the  well-known  yachts 
man.  Only  a  few  persons,  all  immediate 


i66  JIM 

relatives,  were  present.  Miss  Bowen  her 
self  is  an  enthusiastic  sailor  and  has  a  rare 
talent  for  miniature  painting.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Trent  are  sailing  this  morning  on  the 
Schleswig-Holstein  for  a  long  stay  abroad. 

Edith  expected  an  outbreak;  it  would  have  re 
lieved  her  had  there  been  one;  but  Charley,  though 
the  muscles  of  his  face  worked  spasmodically,  folded 
the  newspaper  and  put  it  into  his  pocket  without  a 
word  of  comment.  She  could  not  bear  this;  she 
could  not  bear  the  pain  that  the  action  showed  him 
incapable  of  appreciating. 

"What  do  you  think  of  that?"  she  shrilly  de 
manded.  Her  face  was  yellow.  "  Married!  "  She 
laughed.  "  And  in  a  church,  if  you  please.  He's 
actually  had  the  nerve  to  marry  some  nice  girl— 
and  some  nice  girl  with  money,  too!  I'll  bet  he 
didn't  tell  the  minister  he  was  a  divorced  man.  I'd 
like  to  tell  his  wife  a  few  things — his  wife!"  She 
stood  up.  She  raised  her  voice  as  if  she  intended 
to  shriek  her  message  to  the  bride  across  the  house 
tops  of  New  York.  "  Mrs.  James  Trent,  Number 
Two!"  She  reverted  to  her  second  husband:  "I 
asked  you  what  you  thought  of  it.  Can't  you  talk? 
What  do  you  think  of  it?  " 

Charley  too  had  risen,  but  he  had  risen  to  go 
out. 

"  Don't  yell  so,"  he  cautioned.  "  Do  you  want 
everybody  in  the  house  to  know  about  it?  " 

Her  answer  was  to  go  to  him  and  try  to  take  the 
newspaper  from  his  pocket. 

"  Let  me  look  at  it,"  she  said.  "  I  want  to  read 
that  again." 


JIM  167 

He  seized  her  wrists.  There  was  a  sharp 
struggle. 

"  Stop  it!  "  he  commanded.  "  Why  do  you  want 
to  read  it  again?  "  His  eyes  flashed  a  jealousy  that 
he  had  more  than  once  felt  of  late.  He  twisted  her 
wrists  with  unnecessary  force  and  brought  from  her 
a  cry  of  pain.  "  What  do  I  think  about  it?  I  don't 
think  anything.  I  haven't  got  time  to  waste  on  such 
people.  It  won't  come  to  any  good,  that's  a  sure 
thing." 

The  pain  in  her  wrists  gave  her  some  of  the  re 
lief  she  required;  she  gathered  some  of  the  remainder 
from  his  prophecy  of  evil.  She  stopped  trying  to 
regain  the  newspaper,  but  her  hysteria,  though  di 
minished,  was  not  yet  ended. 

"  I'm  sorry  for  that  girl,  whoever  she  is:  the  poor 
thing  don't  know  what  she's  got,"  said  Edith. 
"Married  again — actually!  And  she  must  have 
money.  And  the  papers  don't  say  I  divorced  him: 
they  don't  even  say  he  ever  had  anything  to  do  with 
a  divorce." 

What  now  moved  Charley  to  quicken  his  depart 
ure  was  the  fear  that  he  would  betray  his  jealousy. 
He  was  held  merely  by  the  greater  fear  that,  if  he 
did  not  partially  quiet  his  wife,  she  might  still  rouse 
the  house  and  make  a  scene. 

"  Of  course  it  was  some  newspaper  friend  of 
Jim's  that  printed  that  account,"  he  said. 

'Rising  young  artist!'  Edith  scornfully 
quoted.  "  Well,  it's  the  end  of  him;  he's  jumped  too 
high  this  time;  he's  sure  to  come  down  now.  He 
can't  keep  on  fooling  people  forever,  and  he  can't 


i68  JIM 

fool  his  wife  for  more  than  a  month  or  two.  He'll 
starve  in  a  garret  once  she's  got  rid  of  him." 

"  Sure  he  will,"  agreed  Charley.  "  People'll  find 
out  what  he  is.  No  fear  of  that."  He  wanted  to 
get  away  and  get  another  drink.  For  the  first  time 
he  was  fully  realizing  what  an  important  part  in 
their  mental  lives  this  man  had  been  playing  ever 
since  they  combined  to  swear  him  out  of  their  ex 
istence.  "  I  guess  his  picture  of  that  Bishop  didn't 
amount  to  much,"  he  concluded.  "I  never  heard 
of  it." 

"  You?  "  She  spoke  quickly  and  from  mere  nerv 
ous  excitement,  but  with  superior  tone.  "  Of  course 
not.  You  don't  know  anything  about  pictures." 

Instantly  the  fire  that  Charley  had  tried  to  master 
shot  up  beyond  his  control. 

"  Of  course  I  don't,"  he  snapped.  "  I'm  a  man, 
and  do  a  man's  work.  Pictures !  Where  did  you 
learn  anything  about  them?  All  you  ever  knew  you 
got  from  him.  Perhaps  you'd  like  to  go  back  to 
him  and  learn  more !  " 

It  took  another  half  hour  to  heal  the  wound  thus 
made,  and  it  sharpened  Charley's  craving  for  a  drink 
to  a  pitch  that  was  almost  unendurable.  At  the 
first  sign  of  returning  quiet,  he  left  her  with  the 
briefest  of  perfunctory  kisses. 

On  his  dash  to  the  saloon,  and  during  most  of 
his  day  at  the  office,  he  was  thinking: 

"  Here's  this  fellow  making  a  good  thing  out 
of  his  work  and  marrying  a  swell,  and  what  I  get 
is  what  he's  used  up  and  thrown  away." 

As  Edith,  at  the  window,  watched  her  husband's 
swollen  figure  cross  the  street  immediately  after  he 


JIM  169 

had  left  her,  something  was  reminding  her  of  what 
the  reporter  at  the  Radical  Club  had  said  of  him, 
and  was  setting  against  this  a  mental  picture  of  Jim 
and  a  young  girl  standing  before  a  clergyman  at 
the  altar-rail.  .  .  . 

She  waited  for  fifteen  minutes.  Then  she  went 
to  the  corner  news-stand  and  bought  a  copy  of  each 
of  New  York's  morning  newspapers.  As  she  paid 
the  boy,  who  knew  both  her  and  Charley,  she  asked : 

"  Did  my  husband  get  some  other  papers  to-day? 
I  mean  when  he  went  by  a  little  while  ago." 

The  boy  pocketed  her  money  before  replying: 
'  Yes'm:  he  got  'em  all,  same  as  you  did." 

She  went  back  to  her  rooms  and  ran  feverishly 
through  the  papers,  but,  although  all  printed  the 
news  of  the  wedding,  none  mentioned  Jim's  previous 
marriage.  Indeed,  the  wording  was  in  each  case 
so  similar  to  every  other  that  it  was  plain  that  a 
common  source  had  supplied  them.  Once,  in  her 
anger,  Edith  thought  of  telephoning  her  story  to 
the  newspaper-offices  as  she  had  once  before  tele 
phoned  it,  but  the  failure  of  the  former  attempt  was 
against  its  repetition,  and  the  friendly  tone  of  the 
wedding-notices  convinced  her  that  the  endeavor 
would  be  futile.  Throughout  that  long  morning 
she  had  lain  on  her  disordered  bed,  leaving  the  room 
as  she  had  wakened  to  find  it.  Dumbly  she  nursed 
a  wound  the  justice  of  which  she  could  not  under 
stand. 

§  2.  At  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  land 
lady's  maid-of-all-work  opened  the  door  without 
knocking  and  thrust  in  her  frowsy  head. 


170  JIM 

"  Summin  t'see  yuh,"  she  said:  she  spoke  simpli 
fied  spelling. 

Edith  had  come  to  the  living-room,  but  was  lying 
on  the  sofa;  the  newspapers,  which  she  had  brought 
with  her  and  re-read,  were  scattered  on  the  floor. 

"Who  is  it?  "  she  asked. 

"  Dunno,"  said  the  maid;  who  had  not  liked 
Edith  since  she  began  to  take  care  of  her  own  rooms 
and,  consequently,  to  cease  tipping. 

"Didn't  you  ask?" 

The  maid  was  a  product  of  the  East  Side,  but  she 
was  also  the  daughter  of  natives  of  the  Central  Rus 
sian  Plateau,  and  had  a  face  that  was  as  stolid  as  a 
Chinaman's. 

"  No,"  she  said. 

"Is  it  a  lady?" 

"  Yessim." 

"  Wait,"  said  Edith. 

She  went  into  the  hall  and  cautiously  leaned  over 
the  balustrade  of  the  stair-well.  In  the  dim  light 
below,  she  could  see  Diana  standing. 

Edith  had  not  seen  Diana  since  the  night  of  the 
former's  unceremonious  desertion  at  the  Radical 
Club.  She  knew  that  Charley  had  never  abated  his 
disapproval  of  the  acquaintanceship,  and  that,  if 
he  heard  of  this  visit,  he  would  dislike  it;  but  she 
determined  not  to  give  up  her  last  friend  for  a  situ 
ation  that  had  already  demanded  and  received  so 
many  sacrifices.  A  few  hours  ago,  it  was  true,  she 
would  have  denied  herself  to  any  caller;  but  the  bit 
terness  that  cries  for  isolation  had  given  place  to 
the  loneliness  that  aches  for  companionship. 


JIM  171 

"  Bring  her  up,"  said  Edith,  "  in  about  five 
minutes." 

"  I'll  tell  her  t'  come  up,"  the  maid  compromised. 

Edith  hurried  back  to  the  living-room.  She  gath 
ered  together  the  clothes  of  the  night  before,  which 
were  still  lying  on  the  chairs  where  she  had  flung 
them,  made  them  into  a  great  ball,  and  tossed  them 
into  the  bedroom.  She  was  about  to  follow  them 
and  make  some  sort  of  toilet  when  there  was  a 
knock  at  the  door:  evidently  the  maid,  heedless  of 
instructions,  or  willfully  disregarding  them,  had  told 
the  visitor  to  come  up  at  once.  Edith  was  annoyed, 
but  postponement  would  now  be  incivility. 

"  Come  in,"  she  said. 

It  thus  happened  that  Diana  found  her  hostess 
much  as  she  had  been  on  the  morning  when  she  an 
nounced  her  intention  to  divorce  Jim.  She  was  in 
her  living-room;  she  was  surrounded  by  open  news 
papers;  she  was  dressed  in  the  same  yellow  negligee. 
Edith  thought  of  this  and  flushed,  for  she  knew 
how  different  was  this  living-room  from  that  other, 
and  how  that  canary-colored  gown  told  the  story  of 
all  that  had  occurred  in  the  interim.  A  moment 
later  she  was  still  more  embarrassed,  for  behind 
Diana's  stood  another  figure:  a  man's. 

"  Oh,"  cried  Edith,  "  I  thought  you  were  alone !  " 

Diana  smiled  graciously. 

"  Do  be  natural,"  she  said.  "  We  are  all  so  much 
better  when  we  are  true  to  our  type.  It's  Archi 
bald." 

It  was  Archibald,  but  Edith  should  have  been 
pardoned  for  her  failure  to  recognize  him.  Except 
that  he  wore  a  flowing  bow-tie  of  salmon-pink,  he 


172  JIM 

was  dressed  like  his  male  fellow-citizens.  His 
clothes,  to  be  sure,  had  been  too  recently  pressed, 
but  they  were  almost  inoffensive.  He  was  wearing 
long  trousers:  the  advocate  of  the  Supremacy  of 
Woman  did  not  brave  the  New  York  daylight  in 
knickerbockers. 

"  Oh!  "  said  Edith  again:  she  had  to  be  natural, 
because  it  was  too  late  to  be  anything  else.  "  Do 
sit  down,"  she  said  to  van  Houyz,  and  then,  rapidly 
to  Diana,  she  gave  an  excuse  that  she  had  just  pre 
pared  for  her  defection  on  the  evening  of  Diana's 
address.  "  It  was  mean  of  us  to  run  away,"  she 
explained,  "  but  the  room  got  terribly  close,  and  I 
thought  I  was  going  to  faint.  There  wasn't  any 
time  to  apologize.  I  hope  everything's  going  on 
well  at  the  club." 

Everything,  it  seemed,  was  not  going  on  well  at 
the  Radical  Club.  The  newest  lot  were  becoming 
uncomfortably  numerous. 

'  You  see,"  said  Diana,  seated  on  the  sofa  beside 
the  bland  worshiper  of  womanhood,  whose  eyes,  for 
getful  of  a  former  rebuke,  were  fixed  on  Edith  as 
she  took  a  chair  opposite  her  callers — "  you  see, 
they're  getting  in  more  and  more  of  their  own  type, 
and  they  don't  care  how  they  do  it,  either.  At  the 
last  meeting,  some  of  them  proposed  an  out-and-out 
Anarchist  for  membership,  and  when  we  found  that 
one  of  the  seconders  of  the  nomination  was  a  man 
that  hadn't  been  elected  a  member  yet  himself,  but 
had  only  just  been  proposed,  they  all  got  angry  and 
said  we  were  taking  our  stand  on  a  mere  quibble. 
They  said  we  were  using  Capitalistic  Methods. 
We're  going  to  resign." 


JIM  173 

"You?"  asked  Edith,  vaguely.  She  had  been 
hoping  for  a  sympathetic  interview  with  Diana 
alone;  all  this  talk  about  an  organization  for  making 
the  world  happy  a  generation  hence  seemed  far 
away  from  her  own  unhappiness  and  decidedly  less 
important. 

"Yes,"  said  Diana,  unriddling  the  pronoun: 
"  Archibald  and  Sylvia  Tytus  and  me." 

"  They  don't  understand  Woman,"  said  van 
Houyz.  u  They  don't  give  her  her  proper  place. 
Would  you  believe  it:  they  have  an  average  of 
three  men  to  two  women  on  every  committee, 
except  the  entertainment-committee  and  the  kitchen- 
committee." 

"  We  feel,"  said  Diana,  her  violet  eyes  shining 
with  earnestness,  "  that  we  should  devote  all  our 
efforts  to  the  really  Great  Work,  so  we  are  going 
to  give  up  everything  to  the  Wimminist  Leeg.  We're 
moving  to  a  new  Headquarters,  and  I've  been  help 
ing  in  the  moving.  I  got  a  substitute  to  take  my 
place  at  the  library  while  we  did  it.  That,"  she 
somewhat  mistily  wound  up,  "  is  how  I  could  get 
around  here  this  afternoon." 

They  wanted  Edith  to  join  the  League,  and  she 
had  not  replied  to  the  circular-letter  they  had  sent 
her.  Why  hadn't  she  replied  and,  please,  wouldn't 
she  join? 

Edith  tried  to  bring  her  throbbing  brain  to  bear 
upon  these  schemes  for  the  betterment  of  the  world. 
She  was  sure  they  must  have  something  to  commend 
them,  in  spite  of  van  Houyz,  since  they  so  completely 
absorbed  the  interest  of  a  woman  like  Diana. 
Moreover,  Edith  did  not  want  to  seem  to  be  put- 


i74  JIM 

ting  Charley  in  a  bad  light.  But  she  could  accom 
plish  nothing. 

"  I  hardly  know,"  she  said.  "  I  don't  believe  I 
can.  I  have  so  much  to  take  up  my  time." 

"  I  work  in  a  library,"  said  Diana. 

The  philosopher  was  clearing  his  throat. 

"  What  we  propose  to  do,"  he  began,  "  is  to  re 
store  Woman  to  her  rightful  position,  the  position 
she  lost  with  the  overthrow  of  the  matriarchy." 

He  sketched  life  under  the  matriarchy  in  a  half- 
dozen  polished  sentences.  In  scarcely  a  dozen  more, 
he  outlined  the  descent  of  woman  to  the  present 
time,  and  then,  with  Diana's  admiring  eyes  always 
upon  him  and  his  eyes  upon  Edith,  he  talked  for  ten 
minutes  on  what  the  world  would  be  when  Woman 
once  more  ruled  it.  He  dismissed  Woman's  Suffrage 
with  a  gesture  and  showed  Feminism  the  door  with 
a  smile:  these  were  beneath  his  powers  of  dispute; 
he  would  none  of  them. 

"  Woman,"  he  concluded,  "  has  the  instinct  for 
Truth,  which  man  has  not,  and  nothing  but  the  truth 
can  make  us  free.  Her  reign  will  see  the  end  of  all 
tyrannies  and  all  lies.  It  will  all  go — all:  from  the 
curse  of  capital  to  the  deception  of  clothes.  We 
shall  be  free  and  nude.  And " 

Edith  caught  herself  drawing  the  folds  of  her 
negligee  around  her. 

" true  Chivalry  will  come  again,"  said  van 

Houyz.  "  Not  that  of  the  so-called  Age  of  Chiv 
alry,  when  Woman  was  a  prisoner  and  called  a 
queen;  not  the  Chivalry  of  to-day,  when  Man  pre 
tends  to  worship  her,  while  in  reality  using  her  for 
his  pampered  toy;  but  genuine  Chivalry,  when  she 


JIM  175 

shall  be  at  liberty  to  do  her  own  work  and  govern 
her  own  world." 

Diana  tore  her  glance  away  from  him  to  deliver 
a  question  to  Edith. 

"  Now  will  you  join?  "  she  asked. 

"  I'll  have  to  think  about  it,"  said  Edith,  who  had 
now  made  up  her  mind  that,  even  should  Charley 
permit  her,  she  would  not  join  anything  to  which 
van  Houyz  belonged. 

"  Good,"  said  Diana.  She  rose,  but  she  had  a 
moment  left  for  trivialities.  "  I  see  that  miserable 
first  husband  of  yours  has  remarried,"  she  added. 

Edith's  assent  was  a  nod. 

"  What  a  creature !  "  said  Diana.  "  You  didn't 
know  him?"  she  asked  of  van  Houyz,  and,  when 
the  philosopher  shook  his  head:  "No?  A  perfect 
type.  You  know:  the  kindly  sort  that  thinks  he 
has  done  everything  for  his  wife  when  he  has  given 
her  all  the  creature-comforts  he  can  afford,  and  then 
refuses  to  go  out  with  her  to  a  meeting  because  he 
says  he  needs  the  sleep  in  order  to  make  more  money 
next  day. — How's  Charley,  dear?  " 

Edith  said  that  Charley  was  quite  well.  She  was 
thinking  how  ill  he  had  looked  that  morning:  how 
ill  and  unsuccessful. 

"  There's  the  fine  type,"  Diana  told  van  Houyz. 
"  He  shares  his  wife's  work  and  pleasures.  I'm 
sure  he'll  join  the  Leeg,  too.  You  must  bring  him 
with  you,  Edith." 

§  3.  That  was  one  of  those  nights  when  Charley 
was  expected  to  dine  and  sleep  at  his  father's  house. 
On  such  occasions,  his  custom  was  to  go  direct  from 


i76  JIM 

his  office  to  the  Vanaman  place  in  Lexington  Avenue 
and  not  reappear  in  Greenwich  Village  until  the 
following  morning;  but  to-day  he  telegraphed  Edith 
that  he  would  do  no  more  than  take  dinner  with 
his  sister  and  would  be  home  by  ten  o'clock. 

The  things  that  occur  day  in  and  day  out,  even  when 
they  are  discouraging  things,  tend,  with  their  every 
occurrence,  toward  quiet;  they  draw  us  back  from 
high  emotions;  the  crab  that  loses  a  leg  returns  to 
his  necessary  burrowing  in  the  sand,  and,  burrowing, 
grows  another  leg:  Charley  closed  his  desk  with  a 
feeling  that  the  leg  which  had  been  torn  from  him 
had  been  replaced  by  a  perfect  duplicate,  that  his 
jealousy  was  shameful  and  unintelligible.  It  would 
all  be  sometime  again  to  be  gone  through  with,  but 
it  would  all  be  gone  through  with:  that  was  the 
routine  of  life.  Meantime,  he  would  pass  so  much 
of  the  evening  with  Edith  as  he  could  wrest  from 
parental  displeasure;  it  would  be  a  difficult  evening 
and  would  require  adventitious  assistance,  but,  if 
properly  and  tactfully  met,  what  it  ended  in  would 
be  the  purchase  of  another  period  of  domestic 
peace. 

He  came  into  the  lighted  living-room  with  a  par 
cel  in  his  arms  and  a  bulky  something  under  his  coat. 
He  put  the  parcel  on  the  table  and  kissed  his  wife 
with  a  renewal  of  the  old-time  passion. 

"What's  that?"  she  asked,  indicating  the  parcel 
on  the  table. 

He  had  already  turned  his  back  to  her,  hurriedly 
to  go  into  the  bedroom.  He  answered  over  his 
shoulder,  one  hand  pressed  beneath  the  bulge  at 
the  breast  of  his  coat. 


JIM  177 

"  A  bottle,"  he  chuckled.  "  I  know  it's  been  a 
bad  day  for  you,  and  I  thought  you  might  want  a 
little  bucking  up." 

She  did  want  it.  She  had  sipped  a  single  cock 
tail  before  her  solitary  dinner,  but  she  did  not  like 
to  drink  alone,  even  when,  as  now,  she  needed  a 
stimulant,  and  her  oppression  had  been  more  than 
the  single  cocktail  could  ease.  She  did  not  want 
Charley  to  continue  his  abuse  of  liquor;  within  a 
few  minutes,  she  might  object  to  his  drinking;  but 
now  she  was  in  no  mood  to  set  good  examples;  she 
was  in  the  mood  to  let  the  repair  of  her  husband's 
habits  wait  upon  better  times. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said. 

He  was  in  the  bedroom  and  had  shut  the  inter 
vening  door.  She  heard  him  in  there  at  the  bureau. 
He  was  at  his  bureau-drawer:  the  bottom  one. 
When  he  tried  to  close  it,  the  wood,  as  she  could 
hear,  stuck  as  it  always  did.  There  was  the  sound 
of  his  kicking  at  it,  and  he  swore  about  this  a  little 
more  than  was  usual. 

Edith's  day  had  affected  her  much  as  Charley's 
had  affected  him.  She  went  to  the  closed  door;  but 
he  heard  her  hand  on  the  knob  and  told  her  to  go 
away. 

"  Can't  I  help?"  she  called. 

"  No,  no !  "  he  answered.  "  Go  away.  It's  all 
right." 

At  that  the  drawer  crashed  shut,  and  he  returned 
to  the  living-room,  flushed  from  his  efforts  and 
furtive. 

"  I  just  wanted  to  get  something  out  of  that 
drawer,"  he  explained,  "  and  it  stuck  the  way  it  al- 


178  JIM 

ways  does."  He  put  his  arm  around  her  and  kissed 
her  a  second  time.  "Have  a  good  dinner?"  he 
inquired. 

"  Yes,"  she  said. 

"Where?" 

"  Just  over  at  Bagnoli's.  It  was  lonely,  of 
course." 

He  patted  her  cheek  in  his  protective  fashion. 

"  What  you  been  doing  all  day?  " 

It  was  his  usual  evening  question;  it  had  long  since 
become  a  purely  formal  one — as,  indeed,  the  mo 
notony  of  their  lives  made  inevitable — but  to-night 
she  was  startled  by  it.  She  remembered  Diana's 
visit  and  wondered  if  the  inimical  maid-of-all-work 
could  have  spoken  of  it  to  Charley  as  he  came  in. 
The  maid-of-all-work  could  not  know  of  his  disap 
proval,  did  not  know  Diana's  name,  rarely  addressed 
him  when  she  chanced  to  meet  him;  but  Edith's 
recent  life  had  made  her  wary,  the  routine  of  de 
ceiving  her  acquaintances  had  forced  her  into  an 
attitude  of  suspicion  toward  her  husband.  Finally, 
Diana's  mistaken  praise  of  Charley  had  been  most 
upsetting:  Edith  was  wondering  whether  that  praise 
was  really  mistaken,  whether  it  was  not  ironic.  .  .  . 

"  I've  been  doing  nothing,"  she  said. 

"Alone  all  day?" 

She  met  his  eyes. 

"Yes." 

The  monosyllable  softened  him.  He  squeezed  her 
shoulder. 

"  Poor  little  woman !  Well,  it's  bound  to  come 
right  one  of  these  days."  He  hurriedly  unwrapped 
the  parcel  on  the  table,  drew  the  cork  of  the  bottle, 


JIM  179 

and,  when  she  had  fetched  a  couple  of  glasses, 
poured  out  two  drinks.  "  Here  we  are,"  he  said. 

The  liquor  burned  her  throat;  she  had  always 
hated  the  taste  of  it;  but  she  drank  eagerly. 

"How's  your  father?"  she  asked. 

That,  too,  was  a  usual  question,  but,  although  it 
usually  brought  the  same  dull  answer,  it  was  daily 
more  significant.  To-night  they  dealt  with  it  fac 
ing  each  other  across  that  table,  the  glasses  between 
them. 

"  About  the  same.  I  don't  know.  A  little  weaker, 
perhaps.  It  seems  as  if  he'd  never — it  seems  as 
if  there'd  never  be  any  change." 

They  sat  down.  Charley  lit  a  bad  cigar.  A  sec 
ond  drink  of  whisky  gave  them  courage. 

"  Did  you  hear  anything  more?  "  she  asked. 

"  About  the  wedding?     No.    Did  you?  " 

"No."  She  broke  out:  "I  don't  see  why  he 
should  have  all  the  luck."  She  poured  forth  her  old 
abuse  of  him.  "  That  kind  of  a  man !  "  As  she  had 
so  often  done  in  these  domestic  conferences,  she  re 
cited  those  charges  against  him  which  she  had  sworn 
to  until  they  had  become  her  unquestioned  articles 
of  faith — of  about  the  only  faith  that  was  left  her. 
"  He'd  even  say  that  he  kept  out  everything  about 
the  divorce  from  the  papers  as  much  to  '  protect '  me 
as  her!  " 

Charley,  pouring  himself  a  trembling  drink  of 
whisky,  chuckled  a  grim  assent. 

She  felt  that  by  this  marriage  Jim  had  again 
somehow  tricked  her.  She  had  been  so  sure  that, 
by  her  accusations  in  the  divorce-suit,  she  had  made 
a  second  marriage  impossible  for  him.  Had  he  man- 


i8o  JIM 

aged  to  conceal  his  divorce  from  the  girl?  Of 
course,  she  was  a  mere  girl,  younger  than  he  was, 
much  younger — Edith  winced  at  the  reflection — than 
Edith.  Had  Jim  imposed  upon  the  poor  thing's 
innocence?  Edith  was  convinced  he  had  secured  that 
publication  of  the  news  of  the  wedding  as  a  message 
to  her,  as  at  once  a  proof  that  he  was  happy  and 
that  scandal  could  not  touch  him:  "Although  he'd 
say  to  everybody  that  he  was  doing  nothing  of  the 
kind;  that  he  wanted  us  happy  and  supposed  we'd 
be  glad  to  know  he  was." 

"Do  you  think  so?"  mused  Charley.  "I  won 
der  if  he  thinks  as  much  about  us  as  we  think  about 
him." 

"  Certainly  he  does!  " 

"  Well,  you  know,  from  all  we've  heard,  he's  a 
pretty  busy  man  just  now,  and " 

"  He  thinks  about  us  all  the  time!  " 

"  Just  a  moment,  please.  I  was  going  to  say  a 
man  couldn't  be  as  busy  as  those  girls  at  that  tea 
said  Jim  was  and  yet  be  thinking  about  anything 
that's  as  much  over  and  done  with  as  that  divorce." 

"How  do  you  know  those  girls  told  the  truth? 
I  don't  believe  they  did.  Besides,  you  can  think  about 
anything  when  you're  only  painting.  You're  doing 
more  than  painting,  but  you  think  about  him." 

That  statement  was  one  to  which  Charley  did  not 
care  to  answer. 

Edith  went  on  again  to  speculate  about  the  new 
wife  of  her  former  husband.  Her  speculations  were 
unflattering. 

"  I  wonder  if  he'll  paint  that  woman,"  she  con 
cluded,  "  the  way  he  painted  me." 


JIM  181 

Charley  chuckled. 

"  Not  much.  She  won't  let  him.  She's  got  the 
money.  She's — — " 

"  Yes,  she's  got  the  money,  and  I  guess  he'll  do 
anything  to  stick  to  that." 

"  Just  a  moment,  please."  Charley's  eyes  were 
bright  with  alcoholic  indiscretion;  his  cheeks  had 
momentarily  lost  their  leathery  hue  and  recovered 
a  touch  of  pink;  the  pouches  under  his  eyes  were 
unnoticeable.  "  She's  got  the  money,  and  when  it's 
the  wife  that  has  the  money  she  don't  stay  blind 
long.  He  can't  keep  it  up.  She'll  get  on  to  him 
soon  and  chuck  him." 

Edith  saw  the  change  in  her  husband.  It  im 
proved  him,  but  she  knew  its  cause,  and  that  fright 
ened  her.  Those  thoughts  which  had  been  imme 
diately  roused  in  her  by  the  comment  of  the  reporter 
at  the  Radical  Club  sprang  into  a  fresh  activity. 
She  saw  Charley  as  a  man  talking  automatically 
from  a  befuddled  brain.  The  day-wrought  sub 
mission  to  the  ordinary  course  of  events  vanished 
before  a  red  rage.  Her  brown  eyes  were  like 
flames. 

"  A  lot  you  know  about  it!  "  she  said. 

Charley  looked  at  her.  His  mouth  lolled  with 
astonishment: 

"  But  that's  just  what  you  said  yourself  this 
morning!  " 

Edith's  laugh  was  strident.  What  did  it  matter? 
What  did  anything  matter?  She  was  still  ti-red. 
The  liquor  seemed  ineffective.  She  wondered  if  an 
other  drink  would  help.  She  was  very  tired.  Life 
was  too  much  for  her. 


182  JIM 

"  Let's  finish  the  bottle  and  go  to  bed,"  she  sug 
gested. 

§  4.  In  the  night  she  woke  to  hear  him  fumbling  at 
the  bureau  and  began  to  recall  that  she  had  heard 
him  doing  this  an  hour  ago,  and  perhaps  once  or 
twice  before.  The  room  was  dark.  She  asked  him 
what  he  was  about. 

"  Just  looking  for  something,"  he  said,  thickly. 
"  Go  to  sleep." 

The  noise  of  the  fumbling  stopped  for  some  sec 
onds.  She  lay  still.  Charley  seemed  to  be  waiting 
until  convinced  that  she  had  obeyed  him.  Presently 
his  bureau-drawer  creaked  open.  Edith  heard  him 
draw  a  cork.  \ 

She  continued  to  pretend  to  be  asleep.  That  was 
so  much  easier. 


ELEVENTH  CHAPTER 

THAT  night  left  Edith  in  one  of  her  fits  of 
desperation  about  Charley.  She  blamed  Jim 
for  her  husband's  condition,  because  Charley 
had  taken  his  first  drink  in  Jim's  company;  but  the 
growth  of  the  habit  she  traced  to  the  financial  anxiety 
under  which  Charley  so  wearily  labored.  Something 
must  be  done;  he  must  be  rescued,  or  he  would  de 
scend  to  the  gutter,  and  she  would  go  mad;  yet 
there  was  only  one  means  of  rescuing  him :  money 
must  be  procured — money,  which  they  had  both  been 
vainly  trying  to  procure  for  months  past — and  where 
was  money  to  be  had? 

For  several  weeks  there  had  been  whispering  in 
her  brain  a  voice  to  which  she  would  not  listen; 
but  to-day  she  was  too  tired  to  turn  away  from  it. 
Those  men  whom  she  had,  before  she  knew  Char 
ley,  amused  in  order  that  they  might  amuse  her: 
why  should  she  not  appeal  to  them? 

She  opened  at  their  pages  the  book  of  her  memory 
as  easily  as  she  had  once  closed  it.  Billy  Namyna 
had  always  been  a  good  fellow;  the  rich  Tommy 
Kirkpatrick,  although  less  generous,  had  always 
said  that  he  would  give  her  whatever  she  might 
want;  George  Mertcheson  earned  a  large  salary,  had 
sworn  that  he  loved  her  above  everything  else  in 
the  world  and  that  he  would  do  anything  she  asked. 
She  had  dropped  them,  the  one  for  the  other  and 
the  last  for  what  really  mattered — for  Charley.  She 

183 


1 84  JIM 

had  taken  care  never  to  see  them  or  communicate 
with  them  again;  she  had  wanted  to  forget  them, 
and  had  forgotten  them;  no  sight  or  word  of  them 
had  come  to  disturb  her;  but  their  wide  promises 
had  been  unconditioned,  and  she  had  canceled  the 
friendship  of  none  of  them  in  anger.  There  was  no 
reason  that  she  could  think  of  to  prevent  her  ap 
proaching  any  one  of  them.  Whatever  she  might 
know,  they  thought  that  she  had  given  more  than 
she  received — that  they  were  in  her  debt.  She  had 
not  loved  them;  she  had  loved  only  the  gayety  to 
which  they  held  the  keys;  but  of  this  she  had  kept 
them  in  ignorance;  she  did  love  Charley  and  must 
help  him.  He  did  not  know  of  their  existence  and 
need  not  know  now.  She  would  give  nothing  now: 
she  would  only  levy  on  their  mistaken  but  undoubt- 
ing  sense  of  past  obligations,  and  then  tell  Charley 
that  the  money  thus  secured  had  been  borrowed  from 
distant  Uncle  Gregory:  the  money  need  be  a  mere 
loan;  it  could  be  repaid  as  soon  as  it  had  launched 
the  Vanaman  Sounder. 

She  hurried  through  her  household  work,  de 
spising  every  task.  She  was  still  nervous  to  the 
verge  of  hysteria  and,  remembering  Charley's  pre 
scription  for  such  trouble,  she  did  what  she  had  never 
yet  done :  went  out,  bought  a  half-pint  flask  of 
whisky,  took  one  drink  before  her  solitary  luncheon 
to  give  her  an  appetite,  and  another  at  the  lunch 
eon's  end  to  assist  digestion. 

The  prospect  brightened.  In  its  glow,  she  could 
tolerate  the  comparison  between  her  present  hus 
band  and  his  predecessor:  Charley's  reputation 
might  have  become  one  for  laziness,  lying,  and  hard- 


JIM  185 

drinking,  but  his  faults  were  faults  that  she  could 
now  remedy.  She  was  sure  his  long  talks  about  his 
invention  had  given  her  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
it.  She  gathered  up  some  of  the  descriptive 
pamphlets  that  he  always  left  lying  about,  and,  after 
a  careful  toilet,  started  on  her  relief  expedition. 
Her  first  advance  was  made  toward  Kirkpatrick,  as 
the  richest  of  the  trio,  and  was  made  by  telephone. 
From  a  nearby  public  telephone-station,  she  called 
up  the  apartment-house  in  which  he  had,  when  she 
met  him,  been  living  for  years. 

"  Mr.  Kirkpatrick's  not  living  here  now,"  the 
clerk  told  her. 

Edith  felt  that  surprise  which  we  all  feel  in  simi 
lar  circumstances :  we  expect  the  people  from  whom 
we  go  away  to  remain  precisely  where  we  leave  them. 
She  felt  that  Kirkpatrick  had  no  right  to  move. 

"Gone  away?"  she  repeated. 
'  Yes,  m'am.    He's  been  gone  two  months  now." 

She  obtained  his  new  address,  looked  up  its  num 
ber  in  the  telephone-directory,  and  called  that. 

A  servant  answered: 

"  Is  Mr.  Kirkpatrick  there?  "  asked  Edith. 

"  Yes,  m'am;  but  I  think  he's  at  luncheon." 

"  Will  you  ask  him  to  come  to  the  'phone,  please? 
I  won't  keep  him  a  minute.  I  just  want  to  know  if 
it  would  be  convenient  for  him  to  see  me  this  after 
noon  on  a  matter  of  business." 

"  Yes,  m'am.    What  name,  please?  " 

Edith  pondered.  If  she  said  "  Mrs.  Vanaman," 
Kirkpatrick  might  not  know  who  she  was;  if  she 
said  "  Mrs.  Trent,"  she  would  probably  be  saying 
it  to  a  man  that  was  aware  of  Jim's  remarriage. 


186  JIM 

"What  name?"  the  servant  asked  for  the  sec 
ond  time. 

"  Edith  Trent,"  said  Edith. 

"  All  right,  Miss  Trent.    Hold  the  wire,  please." 

She  waited  for  a  longer  time  than  she  considered 
necessary.  When  the  telephone  spoke  to  her  again 
she  was  becoming  annoyed  at  Kirkpatrick  and  losing 
the  caution  with  which  she  generally  conducted  con 
versations  by  wire. 

"  Hello?" 

"  Oh,  is  that  you,  Tommy?  "  she  said.  "  What 
on  earth— 

"  No,  this  is  not  Mr.  Kirkpatrick,"  said  the  tele 
phone.  She  had  forgotten  Kirkpatrick's  voice  along 
with  the  rest  of  him,  and  only  now,  when  it  was  too 
late,  she  recognized  this  as  the  voice  of  the  servant 
who  had  previously  been  speaking  to  her — a  voice 
different  from  what  it  had  been  because  it  was  less 
polite.  "  Mr.  Kirkpatrick  says  he  is  very  sorry,  but 
you  must  excuse  him  from  seeing  you :  he  says  to 
tell  you  he  is  lunching  with  Mrs.  Kirkpatrick  and 
will  be  indefinitely  engaged." 

The  servant  rang  off,  and  left  Edith  to  her  morti 
fication. 

Tommy  was  married,  then!  His  mother  was 
dead;  he  had  no  brother,  no  male  relatives  of  his 
own  name:  he  had  often  told  her  so.  "  Mrs.  Kirk 
patrick  "  could  mean  only  one  thing — and  this  was 
his  gratitude;  this  was  his  way  of  informing  her  of 
his  marriage  and  of  saying  that  he  would  have  noth 
ing  more  to  do  with  her. 

She  would  not  be  beaten  yet;  she  would  swallow 
her  anger  and  try  elsewhere.  She  would  not  risk 


JIM  187 

being  put  off  by  telephone;  she  would  see  George 
Mertcheson  in  person. 

Mertcheson  was  the  head  of  the  publicity  depart 
ment  in  one  of  the  public-service  corporations.  Edith 
went  to  his  office  on  a  high  floor  in  a  lower  Broad 
way  skyscraper  and,  refusing  to  send  in  her  name, 
said  that  she  wanted  to  see  him  on  business.  In 
most  offices  her  name  would  have  been  insisted  upon, 
but  she  knew  George  to  be  a  man  of  easy  habits, 
and  she  was  not  disappointed:  she  was  shown  into 
the  inner  office,  where  he  sat  alone. 

For  an  instant  he  did  not  recognize  her,  and  this 
was  a  shock.  Then,  as  she  drew  nearer,  his  sallow 
face  changed  its  expression  from  one  of  polite  curi 
osity  to  one  of  pity  not  unmixed  with  embarrass 
ment.  Nevertheless,  he  got  up  from  his  desk  and 
came  forward,  his  hand  outstretched:  a  loose- 
jointed  figure  of  a  man. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said.  "  Glad  to  see  you.  Where 
did  you  drop  from?  " 

He  had  pretty  eyes  of  blue,  but  his  black  hair 
was  too  straight,  and  there  was  a  wart  on  his  nose ; 
his  head,  which  started  well,  ended  abruptly  in  a 
pointed,  insignificant  chin,  as  if  the  modeler  had 
grown  tired  of  the  work;  the  too  prominent  ears 
the  modeler  had  left  quite  unfinished.  Mertcheson's 
eyelids  rose  and  fell  with  a  nervous  rapidity  remi 
niscent  of  Aunt  Hattie's,  and  his  tone  belied  his  as 
sertion  of  pleasure  at  seeing  her. 

Edith  came  directly  to  the  point. 

"  I've  been  divorced  and  I'm  remarried,"  she  said, 
"  and  my  husband's  in  business,  and  I  want  to  tell 
you  about  it." 


i88  JIM 

His  face  gave  her  no  indication  of  how  much  of 
what  she  said  was  news  to  him.  He  told  her  to 
sit  down,  and  he  sat  down  again  at  his  desk  and  lis 
tened  to  her:  the  man  that  had  sworn  he  would  love 
her  forever. 

Edith  did  know  a  good  deal  about  the  sounder. 
She  talked  for  half  an  hour.  Sometimes  she  thought 
he  was  paying  more  attention  to  what  she  was  than 
what  she  said,  but  this  did  not  disconcert  her,  be 
cause  she  knew  that  an  interest  in  her  person  would 
help  her  project,  if  that  interest  were  not  pressed 
too  far,  and  because,  having  noted  on  her  entrance 
his  recognition  of  the  alteration  in  her,  she  humanly 
wanted  his  attitude  to  be  an  admission  that,  if  she 
had  changed,  she  had  not  changed  entirely  for  the 
worse.  What  she  did  not  count  on  was  what  hap 
pened:  the  personal  interest  was  pressed  forward 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  interests.  When  she 
opened  one  of  the  pamphlets  to  illustrate  from  its 
diagrams  a  point  that  she  was  making,  Mertcheson 
took  her  hand  and  squeezed  it. 

'  You  mustn't  do  that!  "  she  said,  sharply. 

His  blue  eyes  met  her  brown  eyes.  She  did 
not  want  to  lose  her  chance,  but  he  meant  her  to 
understand  one  thing,  and  she  could  not  misunder 
stand  it.  This  Mertcheson,  who  had  once  declared 
he  would  do  for  her  anything  she  might  ask, 
would  help  her,  now  she  was  cornered,  on  only  one 
condition. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked.  He  kept  her  hand  and 
smiled  at  her  knowingly. 

"  I  told  you  I  was  married." 


JIM  189 

"  Well,  weren't  you  married  when  I  knew  you 
before?" 

She  snatched  her  hand  away  and  left  him.  She 
did  not  once  look  back  at  him. 

By  half-past  four  o'clock,  she  had  learned  that  her 
other  chance  was  gone,  too.  Edith,  who  feared  and 
hated  death,  was  told  that  Billy  Namyna  was  dead 
and  buried,  that  the  hand  in  which  her  living  hand 
had  rested 

§  2.  She  found  herself  within  walking-distance  of 
Charley's  office.  She  remembered  how  he  had  urged 
her  to  visit  it  and  how  she  had  declined  to  go  there, 
saying  that  she  had  too  much  to  do  at  home,  yet  in 
wardly  fearing  to  find  some  overt  signs  of  failure. 
Now,  on  the  sudden  impulse  to  seek  from  the  man 
she  loved  refuge  in  the  hour  of  defeat,  she  decided 
to  call  at  the  place.  She  would  get  Charley  and 
take  him  home  with  her. 

She  went  in  the  elevator  to  the  highest  floor,  and 
searched  until  she  found  an  inconspicuous  door  con 
spicuously  labeled: 

THE  VANAMAN  TELEGRAPHIC  SOUNDER 

Edith  turned  the  brass  door-knob  and  entered. 

It  was  a  very  small  room,  the  walls  of  which  were 
hung  with  blueprints  and  diagrams.  Hard  by  the 
single  window  stood  Charley's  roll-top  desk,  closed. 
In  the  center  of  the  room  was  a  long  table,  upon 
which,  amid  a  pile  of  disordered  papers,  stood  a 
telegraphic  instrument  enhanced  by  a  Vanaman 
Sounder.  Close  to  the  door,  under  the  electric  light, 


190  JIM 

a  man,  a  caller  strange  to  Edith,  was  lounging  be 
side  a  typewriter-table  at  which,  her  fingers  idly 
toying  with  the  keys  of  the  writing-machine,  sat  the 
girl  that  must,  the  wife  surmised,  be  Miss  Girodet, 
Charley's  stenographer. 

She  was  a  girl  of  a  sort  so  rare  in  New  York 
as  to  be  worth  any  man's  second  glance.  In  the 
Bordeaux  country,  and  especially  in  Bordeaux  itself, 
her  kind  is  the  rule,  but  it  is  a  kind  that  seldom 
emigrates.  She  was  short  and  robust,  trimly  cor 
seted,  yet  generously  developed.  Her  dark  dress 
was  cut  low  at  the  base  of  the  neck  and  displayed 
a  throat  that  seemed  made  of  warm  ivory.  Her 
mouth  was  full,  a  vivid  red,  and  her  round  cheeks 
were  pink;  but  the  rest  of  her  face  was  marvelously 
white :  a  white  soft  and  firm  and  like  the  white  of 
her  throat,  all  splendid  in  its  contrast  to  her  thick, 
low-combed,  jet-black  hair. 

Edith  felt  an  uncomfortable  emotion. 

"Mr.  Vanaman?"  she  inquired,  for  the  stenog 
rapher  had  not  troubled  to  look  up  at  her  entrance. 

"  Out,"  said  the  girl,  and  went  on  talking  to  the 
caller,  who,  it  seemed  to  Edith,  must  have  come 
to  meet  not  Charley  but  the  girl. 

"  When  will  he  be  back?  "  persisted  Edith. 

The  girl  glanced  apologetically  at  her  caller  and 
turned  a  bored  face,  for  the  merest  moment,  toward 
her  questioner. 

"  I  don't  know.    He's  never  certain." 

"Soon?" 

"  Perhaps  in  fifteen  minutes;  perhaps  not  for  half 
an  hour." 

"Very  well,"  said  Edith;  "  I  think  I'll  wait." 


JIM  191 

She  sat  down  beside  the  table  and  tried  to  look 
at  the  model.  Soon,  however,  she  found  her  glance 
wandering  back  again  and  again  toward  the  softly 
chattering  and  laughing  stenographer,  of  whose 
conversation  she  was  unable  to  catch  any  save  the 
most  casual  words. 

The  man  at  last  turned  away.  Stunned  by  the 
results  of  her  afternoon's  endeavors,  Edith,  who 
generally  had  an  appraising  eye  for  men,  had  noted 
nothing  of  this  one  except  that  he  was  tall  and  slim 
— rather  of  Jim's  build,  she  scornfully  thought — and 
that  he  had  a  dark  face.  But  now,  as  he  left  the 
room,  the  wife  got  her  best  look  at  the  girl.  The 
stenographer  was  gazing  intently  at  the  man,  and 
her  eyes,  under  somber  brows  and  long,  curling 
lashes,  were  big  and  soft  and  black;  they  were  the 
melting  eyes  that  melt  hearts,  and  they  looked  at 
the  departing  caller  with  a  meaning  that  Edith,  out 
of  her  own  experience  and  her  fresh  memory  of 
Mertcheson's  advances,  found  it  impossible  to  mis 
construe. 

When  the  caller  had  gone,  the  stenographer,  with 
out  a  word  to  Edith,  began  to  clatter  at  the  type 
writer.  Charley's  wife  sat  in  silence  until,  ten  min 
utes  later,  Charley  himself  appeared:  he  looked 
tired  and  harassed,  but  his  eyes  were  shining  as 
Edith  knew  they  always  shone  immediately  after  he 
had  taken  a  drink. 

"  Hello!  "  he  said  to  the  typist  as  he  entered;  and 
then,  seeing  Edith,  "  Hello !  "  he  said  in  another  but 
no  less  easy  tone.  "  This  is  good!  How  long  have 
you  been  here?  " 

"  A  half  hour,"  said  Edith.     Her  tone  was  cool. 


192  JIM 

She  had  seen  something  that  she  distinctly  disliked: 
when  Charley  came  in,  his  stenographer  looked  at 
him  precisely  as  she  had  looked  at  the  man  that 
had  left  a  short  time  before.  It  did  not  count  with 
Edith  that  Charley  did  not  return  the  glance:  no 
doubt  he  saw  his  wife  in  time  to  prevent  that.  "  Are 
you  leaving  soon?"  she  added. 

"  Right  away,"  said  Charley.  "  But  don't  you 
want  me  to  show  you  the  office  first?" 

"  No,  thanks.  I've  had  plenty  of  time  to  see 
it — while  I  was  waiting  for  you." 

The  stenographer  had  risen  and  was  pinning  on 
her  hat,  her  hands  raised  above  her  head.  Hers  was 
a  large  black  hat  and  becoming. 

"  Mr.  Tyrrell  was  here,  Mr.  Vanaman,"  she  said. 
— "  Mr.  Tyrrell,  of  Boston." 

"  Eh?  Oh,  that's  too  bad!  "  Charley  was  obvi 
ously  disappointed.  "  Missed  him — and  his  first  visit 
to  the  office,  too.  Did  he  say  he'd  come  again?  " 

"  He  said  he  might  call  again  to-morrow." 

Edith's  voice  interrupted  this  exchange  of  business- 
details. 

"  I  think  he  will  be  sure  to  come  back,"  said  she, 
dryly. 

Vanaman  looked  puzzled.     "You  met  him?" 

"  No.    I  only  gathered  it  from  his  manner." 

The  stenographer  smartly  closed  her  desk: 

"Anything  more,  Mr.  Vanaman?  " 

"  No,  thank  you,  Miss  Girodet,"  the  employer 
answered.  He  went  to  the  door  and  held  it  open 
for  her  as  she  went  out.  "  A  nice  girl,  that,"  he 
added  as  he  closed  the  door  upon  her  exit. 

Edith  was  regarding  him  with  stern  eyes.     Her 


JIM  193 

lips  were  set,  and  she  tapped  the  floor  with  the  toe 
of  her  right  boot. 

"  So  your  business-friend  that  was  here  seemed 
to  think,"  said  she. 

"What— Tyrrell?"  Charley  chuckled.  His 
chuckle  was  hoarse :  it  grated  on  her  nerves.  "  Well, 
any  bait  that  catches  the  fish  Is  good  bait."  He  no 
ticed  the  cloud  on  his  wife's  face.  "  She's  a  good 
worker,  too,"  he  said. 

"  She  appeared  to  be  working  Mr.  Tyrrell," 
replied  Edith,  "  and  she  is  quite  ready  to,  work 
you." 

Charley  blushed.  It  was  a  blush  of  honest  denial 
of  all  guilt,  a  blush,  moreover,  of  fear  of  his  ac 
cuser's  anger;  but  it  was  also  the  blush  of  a  man 
that  is  flattered.  Edith  recognized  only  this  last 
significance. 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Charley. 

"  Who  is  she?  "  demanded  Edith. 

"You  heard:  Miss  Girodet,  my  stenographer. 
You  know  well  enough.  I've  told  you  about  her  lots 
of  times." 

'  You  never  told  me  she  was  like  this." 

"Like  what?" 

"  Well,  you  never  told  me  what  she  looked  like. 
You " 

"  Now,  just  a  moment,  please.  Don't  go  so  fast, 
Edith."  Charley  was  maneuvering  for  delay. 
"  What  does  it  matter  what  she  looks  like,  as  long 
as  she's  cheap  and  does  her  work  well?  " 

Edith  was  not  concerned  with  the  economic  as 
pects  of  Miss  Girodet's  case: 

"She's  French,  I  suppose?" 


i94  JIM 

"  Her  parents  were.  Good  Heavens,  Edith, 
you've  heard  me  speak  of  her  often  enough!  " 

"  Yes,  very  often  indeed,  now  I  come  to  think 
of  it.  Too  often."  Edith's  breast  rose  and  fell 
heavily.  "  But  you  never  happened  to  mention  that 
you  thought  her  a  beauty. — I  know  now  why  you 
wouldn't  discharge  her." 

Charley  saw  trouble  rolling  nearer  and  tried  to 
avoid  it  by  a  lie.  "  I  don't  think  she's  a  beauty." 

"  You  do !  "  Edith's  voice  lifted  to  an  exas 
perating  sharpness,  and  her  lips  parted  in  a  smile 
that  showed  her  teeth.  "  Why  can't  you  tell  the 
truth  for  once?  " 

"  My  dear,"  said  Charley,  trying  to  put  a  heavy, 
quieting  hand  on  the  shoulder  that  was  quickly 
drawn  away,  "  when  have  I  ever  lied  to  you?  " 

"Lied!"  Edith's  anger  burst.  "Do  you  think 
I  believe  all  your  Chinese  stories  and  haven't  I 
known  you  to  lie  under  oath?  Her  cheeks  are 
painted,  and  so  are  her  lips.  Anybody  who  wasn't 
a  fool  could  see  that.  I  know  you.  I  see  you  now. 
I  might  have  known  it  from  the  way  we  started — 
the  way  you  started  with  me."  She  considered  her 
own  case.  She  was  not  pretty  when  she  was  angry, 
and,  now  that  she  broke  into  sobs  of  self-pity,  she 
was  almost  ugly;  but  her  utter  disregard  of  the  con 
sequences  of  the  noise  she  made,  her  carelessness 
to  what  her  husband's  business-neighbors  passing  in 
the  hall  outside  might  think,  had  a  terrifying  sub 
limity.  "  I'm  at  home  washing  dishes  and  mending 
clothes  all  day,  and  you're  down  here  flirting  with 
a  painted  French  girl !  " 

So  she  suspected  his  tales  of  Asiatic  adventure! — 


JIM  195 

He  was  long  to  remember  that,  though  it  hurt  him 
too  much  for  him  to  recall  it  to  her.  And  she  was 
thinking  of  their  testimony  in  the  divorce-suit,  not 
as  she  had  thought  of  it  for  months  past,  but  as 
so  many  lies. — This  too  he  dared  not  dwell  upon. 
It  was  bad  enough  to  have  her  accuse  him  of  infi 
delity  as  she  had  accused  her  former  husband. 
Charley  was  wounded,  but  he  was  even  more  afraid 
of  what  might  follow.  He  scarcely  knew  what  he 
said,  but  what  he  said  was: 

"  Dearie,  dearie,  please  don't  talk  so  loud.  She's 
not  painted." 

"  How  did  you  find  that  out?  " 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  mean Edith,  please!  Some 
body  will  be  sure  to  hear  you." 

"  I  don't  care  who  hears  me !  "  Torn  by  the  long 
strain  of  the  past  months,  the  recent  news  of  Jim's 
latest  success  and  the  failure  of  her  afternoon, 
she  completely  abandoned  herself.  Her  voice 
rose  to  a  shriek.  "A  painted  French  girl!"  she 
cried. 

"Edith!" 

"  I  won't  stop.  You  needn't  try  to  stop  me.  And 
don't  think  she  cares  anything  about  you!  She'd 
make  eyes  at  any  man.  She  does  make  them  at 
every  man.  You're  her  boss,  that's  all.  But  you're 
such  a  soft  thing  that  any  girl  can  fool  you  if  she's 
made  up  enough  and  smiles  at  you.  You're  just  like 
Jim!" 

At  the  mention  of  that  name  which  was  in  the 
minds  of  both,  a  purple  anger  surged  into  Charley's 
face.  He  leaped  forward  and  put  his  hand  over  her 
shouting  mouth. 


196  JIM 

"Shut  up!"  he  commanded. — "Shut  up,  or  I'll 
do  something  that  Jim  never  had  the  nerve  to  do  !  " 

She  struggled  in  his  arms.  She  fought  him,  but 
he  held  her  cruelly  tight.  Then,  suddenly,  she  lay 
still.  She  had  fainted. 

This  presented  a  new  and  mightier  terror.  Char 
ley  found  himself  standing  rigid,  helpless,  wonder 
ing  if  she  were  dead,  and,  if  so,  what,  at  the  inquest, 
witnesses  could  say  of  the  noise  of  that  quarrel. 
He  shook  himself  together,  loosened  her  dress,  and 
fanned  her  face  and  kissed  her.  He  begged  her  to 
open  her  eyes,  and,  as  he  kissed  her,  all  his  love  for 
her  returned. 

"  Come  back!  "  he  whispered  in  her  ear.  "  Come 
back  to  me,  dearie!  Edith,  can't  you  hear?  Won't 
you  hear  me?  What  you  thought  wasn't  true;  but 
if  you'll  only  believe  me,  I'll  do  anything — anything 
you  ask."'  (It  was  what  George  Mertcheson  had 
once  said  to  her.) — "I  love  you,  Edith!"  cried 
Charley.  "I  love  you!  I  love  you!  " 

Slowly  she  opened  the  brown  stars  that  were  her 
eyes. 

"  Will  you — will  you  send  away  that  horrid 
girl?  "  she  asked. 

Her  husband  nodded. 

"  Yes,"  he  said. 

She  clutched  his  hand. 


TWELFTH  CHAPTER 

HUSBAND  and  wife  patched  up  their  quar 
rel,  and  for  some  time  this  patch  wore  as 
well  as  most.     They  began  their  stitching 
without  fully  knowing  what  they  were  doing;  they 
continued  it  because  that  was  the  easiest  thing  to  do. 
Nevertheless,  the  very  presence  of  a  patch  is  a  per 
petual  reminder  of  the  rent  it  covers,  and  the  robe 
of  Charley's  and  Edith's  domestic  relations  had  al 
ready  many  patches. 

Charley  felt  that  he  had  been  grievously  injured 
by  unjust  suspicion,  and  he  was  sorely  offended  by 
Edith's  likening  him  to  Jim;  even  his  pet  past  was 
doubted.  Edith,  who  had  once  said  that  she  might 
have  respected  her  first  husband  had  he  ever  struck 
her,  found  it  difficult  to  tolerate  Charley's  threat  of 
physical  violence.  The  man,  if  he  could  not  wholly 
forget,  at  least  tried  to  forgive;  the  woman,  though 
she  did  not  acknowledge  her  suspicions  unfounded — 
it  was  not  her  custom  to  utter  such  awkward  admis 
sions — made  an  honest  effort  to  put  the  stenographer 
out  of  her  thoughts  as  Charley  put  her  out  of  his 
office :  Edith  blamed  Jim  for  placing  her  in  the  frame 
of  mind  that  made  her  distrust  all  men.  Thus  it 
at  first  appeared  that  nobody  suffered  except  Jim, 
ever  present  in  the  background  of  their  conscious 
ness;  but  the  patch  looked  fresh,  remained  fresh. 

Edith  figured  the  situation  in  martial  rather  than 
sartorial  terms.  She  called  it  a  truce,  and  the  truce, 

197 


i98  JIM 

at  least  on  her  side,  could  not  long  continue.  A  time 
arrived  when  she  violated  its  implicit  terms.  The 
violation  began  timidly,  through  the  roundabout 
ways  of  excuse,  of  self-justification  and  righteous 
anger  elaborately  prepared,  but  it  inevitably 
occurred. 

The  relation  between  man  and  wife  is  no  more 
static  than  any  other  emotional  relation,  and  our 
belief  to  the  contrary  is  only  one  of  those  faiths  that 
we  cling  to  all  the  more  tightly  because  we  feel  in 
our  hearts  that  their  basis  is  a  thing  of  our  own 
making,  whereas  the  quicksand  nature  of  the  soil  on 
which  the  foundation  was  perforce  laid  is  a  condi 
tion  imposed  by  exterior  forces.  Man's  social  his 
tory  is  a  history  of  contention  against  those  forces, 
and  his  method  of  building  is  the  erection  of  a  dwell 
ing  that  he  is  not  yet  fitted  to  inhabit:  he  develops 
for  the  race  an  ideal  standard  in  advance  of  the  real 
individual's  qualifications.  When  the  ideal  totters, 
he  says:  "  In  spite  of  this,  I  must  be  right";  then: 
"  I  will  make  it  so;  "  and  finally:  "  I  will  prop  it  and 
buttress  it  and  pretend  that  it  is  so  and  perhaps, 
somehow,  time  will  solidify  the  quicksand."  He 
loves  his  arbitrary  conventions  because  they  are  his 
own,  endeared  to  him,  however  they  may  crowd  him, 
by  the  traditions  of  his  long  endeavors.  His  faith 
in  them,  his  stubborn  denial  that  the  collective  con 
science  is  still  beyond  the  individual  attainment,  is 
the  stronger  because  it  is  hourly  compelled  to  front 
the  denial  of  facts.  It  commands  for  the  universal 
law  a  desperate  loyalty  that  is  all  the  while  silently 
making  personal  compromises  and  recognizing  per- 


JIM  199 

sonal  exceptions.  With  Edith  Vanaman  those  ex 
ceptions  slowly  had  their  will. 

What  she  thought  was :  "  Since  Charley  has  been 
false  to  his  friendship  with  Jim,  why  should  he  not 
be  false  to  his  love  for  me?  "  The  poverty  of  the 
Winter  months,  the  attitude  of  deceit  toward  the 
world,  the  quarrels,  the  loss  of  friends,  the  elder 
Vanaman's  tenacious  grip  upon  his  slender  thread 
of  life,  Charley's  certain  drunkenness,  his  possible 
lying  about  his  adventurous  past,  the  halt  of  the 
invention,  the  failure  of  her  attempts  to  secure  money 
for  it,  the  unrelieved  hopelessness  of  the  entire  situa 
tion — these  things  pushed  her  forward. 

She  told  herself  that  she  had  been  a  thorough 
going  Puritan — and  without  reward.  The  hunger 
for  friendship  and  a  modicum  of  gayety,  a  hunger 
that  had  increased  through  those  starved  days,  she 
could  no  longer  refuse.  She  had  done  her  best  to 
help,  but  she  was  impotent;  and  in  every  corner  cafe 
New  York  danced.  The  memory  of  that  picture  of 
the  tango-dancers  remained  with  her  as  a  symbol  of 
everything  she  was  missing,  as  something  that  con 
tinually  inquired  of  her  whether  she  was  not  to 
snatch  a  little  joy  before  the  final  crash  of  Char 
ley's  fortunes  which  could  not  much  longer  be  post 
poned.  It  did  not  seem  to  her  a  trivial  thing,  this 
dancing:  it  seemed  to  her  the  only  means  of  relief, 
of  meeting  new  people  and  new  thoughts  that  would 
not  associate  themselves  in  her  mind  with  those  con 
ditions  which  she  must  now  from  time  to  time  for 
get  if  she  would  escape  madness:  the  only  means  to 
a  few  and  rare  moments  of  forgetfulness.  Once 
she  remembered  that  Jim  had  allowed  her  to  take 


200  JIM 

riding-lessons,  of  no  use  to  her  now,  and  reflected 
that  he  would  have  been  equally  free  in  his  permis 
sion  for  tango-lessons;  but  such  permissions  of  course 
came  from  his  lack  of  interest  in  her  pursuits;  they 
furnished  no  ground  for  comparison  with  Charley. 
He,  in  any  case,  would  never  consent  to  the  instruc 
tion;  about  that  he  had  gone  on  record.  There  was 
but  one  way  to  win  him:  she  must  take  the  lessons 
secretly,  learn  them — everybody  said  that  they  were 
easy — surprise  him  with  her  accomplishment,  and, 
teaching  it  to  him,  trust  to  the  accomplished  fact. 
Charley  was  awkward,  but  she  could  teach  him.  He 
was  timid,  and  his  objection  probably  rose  from 
envy:  it  was  necessary  only  to  give  him  what  he 
thought  he  could  not  acquire.  She  would  no  more 
deny  herself. 

The  speed  and  completeness  with  which  the  New 
Dancing  had  conquered  New  York  was  characteris 
tic  of  that  city  at  that  time.  Labor  was  restless, 
capitalistic  reform  had  been  given  a  fair  test  and 
proved  incompetent,  the  cost  of  living  had  mounted 
to  a  dizzy  height,  the  whole  world  was  ready  for 
war,  and  all  classes  were  seeking  a  nepenthe.  For- 
getfulness  is  always  more  expensive  than  endurance : 
the  drugs  offered  and  eagerly  bought  were  the 
cabaret-performances  and  the  tango.  Nearly  every 
restaurant  in  town  had  "put  on"— that  was  their 
word  for  it — a  cabaret-performance,  in  which  hired 
singers  and  dancers  sang  and  danced  on  a  stage  or 
among  the  tables  while  the  patrons  dined  and  drank. 
It  was  a  godsend  to  superannuated  chorus-girls  and 
talentless  amateurs,  the  proprietors  equalizing  ex 
penses  by  raising  the  prices  of  food  and  lowering 


JIM  201 

its  quality.  Then  the  tango,  having  become  popular 
in  the  theaters,  was  introduced  in  the  cabarets.  Paid 
entertainers  were  seated  at  tables;  they  were  so 
clothed  as  to  appear  as  if  they  were  customers  of  the 
place,  but,  at  given  intervals,  they  would  pretend  that 
they  were  unable  to  resist  the  lure  of  the  orchestra 
and  would  dance  the  tango  among  the  diners.  Once 
a  drunken  guest  seized  a  girl-professional  and 
learned  the  new  steps  under  the  eyes  of  his  approv 
ing  neighbors.  Other  men  followed  his  example.  A 
little  later,  the  more  easy-moraled,  and,  conse 
quently,  careless,  among  the  woman-diners  joined 
and  learned  the  dance  in  order  to  prevent  the 
winning-away  of  their  hosts'  allegiance  and  to  meet 
the  competition.  In  a  respectable  world,  the  re 
spectable  woman  can  win  and  hold  a  man  in  mar 
riage  only  by  approaching  turpitude  as  closely  as 
respectability  will  permit:  the  respectable  woman 
learned  the  dances  and  liked  them.  And  so,  at  home 
and  in  cafes  of  every  sort,  the  good  and  the  bad 
rubbing  shoulders,  all  New  York  was  tangoing. 

Among  these,  driven  as  we  have  seen  her  driven, 
soon  was  Edith.  She  would,  of  course,  have  pre 
ferred  to  take  private  lessons,  but  these  the  money 
at  her  disposal  would  not  permit,  so  she  searched 
the  advertising-columns  of  the  newspapers,  in  which 
new  schools  of  dancing  grew  faster  than  nastur 
tiums,  and  selected  a  list  of  what  she  thought  were 
the  newest,  smallest,  and  cheapest.  None,  it  ap 
peared  upon  investigation,  were  old,  few  had  small 
classes,  and  all  were,  from  her  present  point  of  view, 
expensive. 

"  Of  course  we're  not  an  old  institution,"  the  dap- 


202  JIM 

per  proprietor  of  one  establishment  enlightened  her, 
"because  we  specialize  in  only  the  new  dances;  but 
the  very  fact  that  we're  new  and  up  to  date  brings 
the  crowd.  Everybody's  crazy  to  learn,  and  so  our 
smallest  class  is  rather  large.  Our  price  is  'way 
below  the  average,  but  the  people  that  want  to  keep 
up  with  the  times  are  always  willing  to  pay  for  it." 

The  Spring  was  warm  in  Edith's  blood  again. 
At  the  fourth  place  of  inquiry  she  committed  herself 
to  a  series  of  afternoon  lessons. 

§  2.  The  "  school  "  was  high  in  a  West  Forty- 
fifth  Street  building  full  of  theatrical  agents'  offices, 
the  visitors  to  which  filled  the  elevator  with  the 
scent  of  essences  and  chewing-gum.  The  hall  was 
not  large,  and  its  ceiling  was  low.  Along  the  walls 
were  ranged  rows  of  folding-chairs.  At  one  end 
an  expressionless  woman  sat  at  a  piano.  On  the 
polished  floor  were  two  or  three  groups  of  serious 
people  of  both  sexes  and  every  age,  each  group  in 
charge  of  a  deputy-instructor.  The  chief  instructor, 
the  thinnest  man  Edith  had  ever  seen,  darted  from 
one  of  these  groups  to  another,  clapping  his  hands 
to  mark  time  or  arrest  attention,  his  coat-tails  flying, 
his  eyes  intense.  Now  he  would  illustrate  a  "  step  " 
alone;  now  with  his  chief  lieutenant,  a  blond  girl 
as  thin  as  himself ;  again  he  would  swoop  on  a  couple 
of  dancing  pupils,  pull  them  apart  and  correct  some 
of  their  errors  by  assuming  the  masculine  or  femi 
nine  role,  as  the  case  required,  and  whirling  through 
it  with  the  lesser  offender.  The  expressionless 
woman  at  the  piano  followed  him  with  stony  eyes, 
began  playing  at  his  command,  without  expres- 


JIM  203 

sion,  but  with  abnormal  accentuation  of  time,  and 
stopped,  again  at  his  command,  in  the  middle  of  a 
bar. 

"  Glad  to  see  you,"  said  the  thin  man,  when  Edith 
had  made  known  her  errand  to  him.  "  And  you 
want  to  start  right  away?" 

Edith  looked  at  the  other  pupils.  She  wanted  to 
begin  among  beginners. 

The  thin  man  interpreted  her  gaze. 

"  Oh,  don't  mind  them,"  he  said.  "  They  won't 
mind  you  a  little  bit.  Come  on,  now."  He  stood 
before  her,  his  hands  on  his  narrow  hips,  and  spoke 
in  the  most  businesslike  tone.  "  The  first  thing 
to  remember  is  you  don't  dance  the  new  dances  with 
your  head.  And  the  next  thing  is  just  to  get  into 
the  rhythm  and  let  yourself  go.  Give  me  your  hand. 
That's  it.  Miss  Gilroy." 

Miss  Gilroy  was  evidently  the  pianist,  and  the 
mention  of  her  name  was  audibly  a  command  for  the 
music  to  continue.  The  music  did  continue,  and 
Edith's  first  lesson  began. 

Compared  with  Edith,  the  other  pupils  were  ex 
perts.  She  had  learned  the  old-fashioned  dances  at 
Ayton  in  a  class  of  which  the  members  were  all 
young,  as  she  had  been,  all  raw  novices  and  all  her 
friends.  This  was  another  affair  altogether,  and 
at  first  she  was  awkward  from  sheer  embarrass 
ment;  but  she  had  not  taken  a  dozen  steps  before 
a  glance  at  her  present  companions  assured  her  that 
the  thin  man  was  right:  these  other  pupils  were  too. 
seriously  bent  upon  mastering  their  art  to  have  any 
eyes  for  her.  In  the  words  of  one  of  the  songs  that 
had  led  the  vanguard  of  the  new  dances,  everybody 


204  JIM 

was  "  doin'  it "  and  doin'  it  doggedly  for  himself 
and  his  momentary  partner  alone. 

The  teacher  had  put  out  his  arms,  and  Edith 
stepped  into  them. 

"  Now,"  said  the  teacher.  "  Just  let  yourself  go 
with  me.  Um-tum-te-um-tum,  um-tum,  um-tum. 
Legs  apart.  Keep  your  knees  close  to  mine." 

She  went  red,  but  she  obeyed. 

"That's  it;  that's  it.  So.  There  you  are.  Um- 

tum-te No,  no!  From  your  hips;  from  your 

hips  only.  Miss  Gilroy.  Most  teachers  prefer  the 
machine-music,  but  I " 

The  sufficiently  mechanical  music  stopped.  So  did 
the  other  dancers.  The  thin  man  repeated  his  in 
structions  in  a  voice  for  all  the  room  to  hear;  but 
Edith,  though  ashamed  for  the  mistake  she  had 
made,  saw  that  the  pupils'  attention  was  for  him 
and  not  for  her.  He  performed  the  step  alone. 

"  This  way.  What  you  must  put  your  mind  on 
is  simply  to  keep  your  feet  close  to  your  partner's 
and  far  from  each  other,  and  don't  move  your  shoul 
ders.  Now,  try  again.  Hold  tight.  Miss  Gilroy." 

Edith  stepped  on  the  instructor's  feet,  but  he 
smiled  and  kept  on.  "  Don't  get  rattled,"  he  said. 
"  Um-tum-te-um-tum,  um-tum,  um-tum." 

Then,  all  at  once,  she  was  doing  it;  she  had 
learned;  at  least  of  these  elementary  movements  she 
was  mistress.  How  this  had  happened  she  could 
not  have  explained;  she  knew  only  that  she  gave  her 
self  to  the  rhythm  of  that  foolish  tune.  The  thing 
was  so  easy  as  to  seem  not  worth  payment:  all  save 
details,  all  save  what  she  thought  of  as  embroidery, 
was  accomplished. 


JIM  205 

Those  elaborations  came  later  as  the  lessons,  rein 
forced  by  solitary  home-practice  on  her  aching  legs, 
progressed.  The  one-step,  the  Castle,  and  the 
turkey-trot,  the  grape-vine,  and  the  dip,  were  fol 
lowed  by  evolutions  more  and  more  intricate.  Edith 
learned  the  Texas,  the  Boston,  and  the  Hesitation, 
and  then  half  a  dozen  other  variations.  At  the  end 
of  a  fortnight,  just  as  her  savings  were  gone,  she 
could  carry  herself  through  the  dance  that  her 
teacher  called  the  "  max-^c/z-ie." 

"  You'll  never  make  a  professional,"  he  told  her; 
"  but,  with  a  good  partner,  you'll  be  a  first-rate 
parlor-performer." 

Edith  left  the  hall  that  afternoon  with  a  new  glow 
in  her  heart.  During  the  past  fourteen  days  she 
had  been  recapturing  joy,  and  joy  recaptured  bright 
ened  her  eyes,  colored  her  cheeks,  did  for  a  time 
what  the  Spring  promised  and  failed  to  do:  made 
her  young  again.  Even  Charley  saw  it  and,  in  his 
clumsy  way,  said  so.  But  she  decided  that  it  was 
not  yet  time  to  tell  him  the  secret. 

§  3.  As  she  came  away  from  her  last  lesson,  she 
tried  to  set  her  mind  to  a  consideration  of  things 
as  they  were  with  her.  The  moment  presented  itself 
as  decisive. 

She  had  again  made  friends  with  gladness.  What 
her  lessons  did  for  her  was  not  merely  negative. 
They  not  only  shut  her  mind,  while  they  were  in 
progress,  against  the  memory  of  her  disappoint 
ments  and  the  hopelessness  of  her  husband's  affairs; 
they  opened  another  door,  the  door  beyond  which 
she  had  always  wanted  to  pass,  the  door  to  light 


206  JIM 

and  music  and  freedom  from  care,  to  the  fairy- 
elements  that  composed  what  she  considered  Suc 
cess.  They  sharpened  her  longing,  gave  her  a 
glimpse,  pointed  a  way. 

Nevertheless,  they  were  expensive.  They  were 
expensive  emotionally,  though  that  she  but  dimly 
apprehended;  and  they  were  expensive  in  material 
dollars  and  cents,  and  of  this  she  was  now  desper 
ately  aware.  "  The  people  that  want  to  keep  up 
with  the  times,"  the  dapper  proprietor  had  told  her, 
"  are  willing  to  pay  for  it " :  Edith  had  spent  the 
last  penny  of  her  savings.  The  tuition-fees  took 
much.  Then  it  was  evident  that  a  special  kind  of 
skirt  was  needed  for  the  execution  of  the  new  dances 
and,  next,  a  special  kind  of  corsets  and  shoes.  The 
makers  of  these  luxuries  were  trading  on  the  tango- 
craze  as  sharply  as  the  dancing-masters,  were  ask 
ing  those  prices  which  people  that  wanted  to  keep 
up  with  the  times  were  willing  to  pay :  Edith,  rashly 
defying  experience  with  the  hope  of  some  good  luck 
coming  to  the  Vanaman  Sounder,  had  appropriated 
for  skirt  and  corsets  and  shoes  money  that  Charley 
gave  her  for  the  room-rent,  and  the  landlady  was 
again  ominous. 

Charley's  business-position  was  rapidly  becoming 
untenable.  She  knew,  because  of  his  very  silence 
concerning  it,  that  he  had  again  sunk  into  debt, 
that  the  office-rent  was  in  much  the  condition  in 
which  the  room-rent  was,  that  printers  and  other 
creditors  were  pressing  him,  and  that  Mame  had 
no  more  money  to  lend.  These  things  reacted  on 
his  habits,  his  physique,  his  temper:  he  was  drinking 
harder  than  ever;  his  face  was  fat  and  gray  and 


JIM  207 

haggard;  he  seemed  to  burrow  into  her  words,  even 
into  her  gestures,  for  grievances,  and  he  would  brew 
red  rages  that  shot  from  his  mouth  in  flames  of  burn 
ing  accusation  and  reproach. 

Her  position  was  almost  worse  because  of  that 
touch  of  contrast  which  the  dancing-lessons  supplied. 
From  dully  hopeless  it  had  become  acutely  intoler 
able.  On  the  one  hand,  the  door  to  gladness  was 
opened  enough  to  tantalize  her  by  the  sight  and 
sound  of  what  lay  beyond  it,  yet  too  little  to  per 
mit  her  passage  through;  from  the  other  advanced 
implacable  danger  and — yes,  she  at  last  thus  con 
fessed  its  nature — irretrievable  failure. 

Unwilling  to  return  at  once  to  the  scene  of  what 
must  so  soon  be  this  disaster,  she  had  walked  east 
along  Forty-fifth  Street.  She  turned  south  on  Fifth 
Avenue. 

The  shop-windows  were  full  of  those  beautiful 
things  which  she  loved,  which  she  had  once  been 
certain  of  possessing,  which  she  now  realized  she 
could  never  obtain:  they  were  ornaments  that  she 
would  have  ornamented,  clothes  that  she  would  have 
worn  so  much  better  than  the  women  who  could 
afford  them.  Thousands  of  women  could  afford 
them,  but  Edith  never  could.  They  beckoned  to  her 
and  smiled  at  her,  these  beautiful  things.  Pretend 
ing  to  scorn  the  mention  of  mere  money,  and  de 
signed  for  customers  to  whom  money  mattered 
everything  in  bulk  and  nothing  in  detail,  they  were 
displayed — gowns  and  rings,  brooches  and  opera- 
cloaks,  hats  and  tiaras,  embroidered  stockings  and 
delicate  anklets,  weblike  lingerie,  jeweled  slippers, 
massive  bracelets,  necklaces  of  diamonds,  ropes  of 


208  JIM 

pearls — without  the  vulgarity  of  a  price-mark  that, 
if  it  told  the  truth,  would  tell  a  price  which  the 
merchants  were  ashamed  to  advertise.  Persons — 
some  quite  commonplace-looking  persons — saw  them 
and,  innocent  of  a  second's  hesitation,  went  into  the 
shops  to  buy.  Close  at  hand  these  treasures  lay, 
but  far  beyond  Edith's  reach ;  they  hung  from  metal 
rods,  shone  on  mockingly  superior  wax  figures,  spar 
kled  out  of  cushions  of  pale  yellow  and  royal  purple 
behind  a  scant  quarter-inch  of  plate-glass  window; 
yet  from  Charley  Vanaman's  wife  they  were  as  far 
away  as  the  glittering  planets  are  from  the  astrono 
mer  when  he  studies  them  through  the  lens  of  his 
telescope. 

It  was  half-past  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and 
the  Avenue  was  filled  with  those  fortunate  of  New 
York's  women  who  want  everything  and  have  every 
thing,  who  cannot  count  the  cost  of  what  they  desire 
and  do  not  have  to  count  it.  They  passed  in  freshly 
varnished  motor-cars,  directed  by  liveried  chauffeurs ; 
in  broughams  behind  sleek  thoroughbred  horses 
driven  by  cockaded  coachmen;  they  brushed  Edith 
on  the  sidewalk;  they  wore  pumps  and  silk-stockings, 
yet  were  dressed  in  furs  too  heavy  for  the  Spring 
weather  and  too  expensive  for  the  daughters  of 
feudal  overlords.  All  of  them  were  chattering,  all 
of  them  were  laughing,  all  of  them  were  ignorant 
of  what  it  was  to  be  stalked  by  debt  or  balked  by 
prices.  Here  and  there,  easy,  gallantly  attentive  to 
the  happy  girl  beside  him,  gracefully  mannered  with 
the  instinctive  social  rectitude  of  the  person  born  to 
the  world  of  leisure,  appeared  a  man,  slim,  correct, 
his  clothes  made  for  him  and  not  he  for  his  clothes, 


JIM  209 

the  male  complement  to  the  woman  of  Fifth  Avenue 
at  four-thirty,  a  creature  of  a  species  that  Charley 
might  occasionally  say  one  word  of  business  to  in  a 
month,  but  never  approach  any  nearer.  There  was 
among  them  all,  women  and  men,  the  freemasonry 
of  extravagant  wealth:  friend  waved  muff  or  raised 
hat  to  friend,  called  across  the  curb  from  limousine 
to  pavement  some  polite  question  about  last  night's 
dance  or  some  invitation  to  to-morrow's  opera.  Even 
those  who  were  not  personally  known  to  one  an 
other  had  signs  of  mutual  understanding,  tacit  rec 
ognitions  and  acceptances. 

In  the  throng  of  them  the  few  less  fortunate  were 
swallowed  up;  the  envious  mimicked;  the  total  im 
pression  was  an  impression  of  complete  well-being. 
Edith  read  her  newspapers  and  her  scandalmonger- 
ing  weekly  magazines,  those  blackmailing  social- 
scavengers  which  exact  tribute  from  the  weaker  rich 
who  fear  publicity,  depending  for  their  circulation 
upon  the  Edith  Vanamans  of  New  York:  she  knew 
many  of  the  passersby — the  society  women,  the 
actresses,  the  millionaires — from  printed  pictures 
and  descriptions,  and  she  knew,  from  her  reading, 
the  daily  life  of  all. 

They  had  wakened  late  and  slowly  in  quiet  bed 
rooms.  Capped  and  aproned  servants  had  brought 
coffee  and  rolls  or  toast  and  tea  to  their  bedsides. 
They  had  stepped  into  baths  of  a  prescribed  tem 
perature.  They  had  ridden  good  horses  in  Central 
Park.  They  had  come  home  to  be  dressed  by  maids 
or  valets  in  clothes  selected  from  rooms  resembling 
these  shop-windows.  They  had  motored  here  to 
luncheon,  there  to  tea.  Now  they  took  exercise  along 


210  JIM 

Fifth  Avenue  as  familiarly  as  they  would  soon  be 
playing  tennis  on  the  lawns  of  their  own  summer- 
places  at  Newport  or  Bar  Harbor. 

Fifth  Avenue  belonged  to  them,  because  they  could 
afford  it.  Soon  the  shining  asphalt  of  it  would  be 
entirely  hidden  by  the  long  line  of  their  cars:  rich 
women  going  home  to  dinner  from  unhampered 
shopping,  rich  men  going  home  to  dinner  from  the 
club  or  from  huge  financial  manipulations  that  they 
performed  as  men  play  cards  to  whom  the  stakes 
are  insignificant.  Then  the  motors  would  reappear 
to  join  the  theater-procession  along  Broadway,  and 
Broadway,  when  the  theater-curtains  rose,  would  be 
come  as  quiet  as  the  main  street  in  Ayton  on  a 
mid-week  evening,  only  to  change,  as  the  curtains 
fell,  into  a  blazing  canyon's  river-bed  too  narrow 
for  the  noisy  flood  poured  into  it.  The  suppers,  the 
cabarets,  the  tango-dancing  would  begin.  .  .  . 

And  Edith  Vanaman  would  be  sitting  in  a  sordid 
room  in  Greenwich  Village,  with  the  elevated- 
railway  trains  screaming  close  to  her  window,  watch 
ing  her  shabby  husband  drink  and  listening  to  him 
brag  about  what  he  would  do  when  his  luck  changed 
and  what  he  had  done  in  a  country  that  she  won 
dered  if  he  had  ever  visited. 

§  4.  At  Forty-second  Street  she  turned  westward, 
meaning  to  take  a  Seventh  Avenue  car  home;  but 
she  walked  slowly:  the  feet  that  had  been  dancing 
were  loath  to  drag  her  toward  her  dingy  lodgings, 
and  her  mind,  busy  with  the  pictures  of  what  she 
had  left  and  what  she  was  going  to,  directed  her 
steps  languidly.  More  than  one  passerby  turned 


JIM  211 

to  look  after  her,  for  the  sparks  of  her  recaptured 
joy  still  shone  out  of  the  brown  eyes  and  bright 
ened  the  round  cheeks  behind  which  the  old  despair 
was  rising;  yet  she  was  so  preoccupied  that,  within 
two  hundred  yards  of  Broadway,  she  avoided  a 
man  coming  toward  her  only  to  bump  sharply  into 
another  man  going  in  her  own  direction. 

u  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Edith. 

She  scarcely  looked  at  her  victim,  but  received 
the  impression  that  he  belonged  in  the  crowd  that 
she  had  seen  on  Fifth  Avenue.  Because  her  envy 
of  that  crowd  was  so  sharp,  she  was  not  disposed 
to  look  at  him  a  second  time. 

Her  victim,  however,  for  a  half-minute  seemed 
to  consider  himself  the  aggressor.  He  stopped, 
pulled  at  his  little  black  mustache,  raised  his  hat,  and 
rapidly  began  a  full  apology. 

"  Oh,"  he  interrupted  himself  in  the  midst  of  it — 
"  and  it's  Mrs.  Vanaman.  I  am  so  sorry." 

She  knew  him  now:  he  was  the  man  she  had  seen 
in  Charley's  office  in  subdued  talk  with  Miss  Girodet. 
Edith  despised  him  for  that  intimacy  with  a  stenog 
rapher,  perhaps  the  more  because  it  was  carried  on 
when  a  better  sort  of  woman  was  within  speaking- 
distance;  but  it  struck  her  that  she  must  be  careful 
not  to  show  him  her  feelings,  because  Charley  had 
told  her  that  this  Mr.  Tyrrell  was  a  rich  young  Bos- 
tonian  who  evinced  an  interest  in  the  sounder  and 
might  be  persuaded  to  invest  in  it. 

"  Yes,"  she  said.     "  But  you  didn't  hurt  me." 

"  Are  you  sure?  "  he  pressed  her.  His  voice  was 
the  voice  of  cultivation,  and  his  tone  genuinely  so 
licitous.  "  I  was  very  awkward.  And  I  hope  you'll 


212  JIM 

forgive  me  for  knowing  your  name.  I  saw  you  in 
your  husband's  office  one  day  and,  the  next  time  I 
went  there,  I  dared  to  make  inquiries." 

She  had  thought  him  like  Jim,  but  now  she  saw 
that,  physically,  there  was  no  real  resemblance. 
What  points  of  likeness  there  might  be  were  negligi 
ble,  and  only  an  ease  of  manner  and  readiness  of 
phrase  were  so  sufficiently  dissimilar  from  Vanaman 
and  so  sufficiently  similar  to  his  predecessor  as  to 
insist  at  all  upon  a  comparison.  Tyrrell  was  younger 
than  either  Jim  or  Charley,  but  his  dark  hair  was 
touched  with  a  premature  gray  and  his  face  was  the 
self-possessed  face  of  a  man  of  means  that  is  also  a 
man  of  the  world.  It  was  a  stern,  strong,  dignified 
face  with  piercing  eyes  and  a  firm  mouth,  and  yet 
it  gave  her  the  feeling  that  the  man's  strength,  since 
he  had  inherited  more  money  than  he  could  use, 
was  devoted  to  procuring  enjoyment.  He  was  pale 
and  lean  and  dressed  with  a  quietness  that  Edith 
recognized  as  expensive.  He  had  a  pleasant  smile 
that  showed  his  lips,  when  relaxed,  to  be  full,  and 
his  gray  gaze  was  provocative  as  well  as  piercing. 
Edith  knew  at  a  glance  that  he  belonged  on  the 
bright  side  of  the  door  forbidden  to  her.  She  had 
to  admit  that  he  was  handsome ;  she  felt  at  once  the 
lure  that  the  light  has  for  all  those  who  are  in  the 
shadow,  felt  it  quick  and  keen;  but  she  resolutely 
set  her  mind  to  wondering  what  such  a  man  could 
have  discovered  to  attract  him  in  the  stenographer 
that  her  husband  had  since  summarily  dismissed. 
She  had  a  sense  that  she  must  keep  a  firm  grasp  on 
the  sword  of  her  displeasure  because,  against  the 


JIM  213 

attacks  of  an  adversary  of  this  sort,  the  shield  of 
her  resistance  was  frail. 

"  I'm  quite  sure  I  wasn't  hurt,"  she  said. 

"  Then  you  won't  hold  it  against  me?  "  he  smiled. 

"  I  won't  bump  against  you,  if  that's  what  you 
mean,"  she  put  it. 

The  blow  went  home.  His  smile  broadened  to  a 
frank  laugh. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I'll  confess— if  there's  any 
virtue  in  a  thief's  confession  when  he  is  caught  with 
the  stolen  property  in  his  .waistcoat-pocket.  I  saw 
you  and  recognized  you.  I've  been  wanting  for  some 
days  to  apologize  to  you  for — for  something  that 
seemed  to  me  to  require  an  apology;  and  so,  when 
I  saw  you  strike  that  chap  and  carom  in  my  direc 
tion,  I — well,  I  rather  put  myself  in  your  way." 

Edith  felt  the  weight  of  her  buckler:  "Is  that 
your  way  of  getting  a  chance  to  apologize?  " 

"  Oh,  for  a  good  deed,"  he  expostulated,  "  any 
way  is  a  good  way." 

"  Then,"  she  struck  again,  "  suppose  you  tell  me 
what  you  want  to  apologize  for,  and  then  suppose 
you  apologize."  She  remembered  that  this  ingra 
tiating  young  man,  whom  she  still  wanted  to  mis 
trust,  might  save  the  sounder's  fortunes;  she  re 
membered  it  just  in  time  to  refrain  from  concluding: 
"  And  then  suppose  you  let  me  go  on  my  way  home." 

If  the  young  man  guessed  the  suppression — and 
there  was  a  twinkle  in  his  eyes  that  made  her  sus 
pect  that  he  guessed  it — he  did  not  permit  it  to  dis 
turb  him.  He  took  quite  the  opposite  course.  He 
said: 

"  It's  a  long  story." 


2i4  JIM 

"  If  that's  so,"  said  Edith,  "  perhaps  Forty- 
second  Street  isn't  the  place  to  tell  it,  after  all."  She 
made  as  if  to  move  on. 

Tyrrell  patently  chose  to  misunderstand  her: 

"  You  take  the  words  out  of  my  mouth.  You 
quite  charmingly  relieve  me  of  the  embarrassment 
of  asking  it.  Honestly,  I'm  grateful." 

He  puzzled  her.  Curiosity  overcame  caution,  as 
only  curiosity  so  splendidly  can. 

"  You  mean  I  relieve  you  of  the  embarrassment 
of  asking  my  pardon — of  making  your  apology  for 
I  don't  know  what?  " 

"No;  on  the  contrary:  of  asking  you  to  let  me 
make  it  in  a  fitter  place.  You  give  me  hope  of  ulti 
mate  mercy.  I  was  beating  my  poor  brains  to  think 
of  a  way  to  induce  you  to  let  me  select  a  quieter 
scene.  I  need  courage  to  ask  mercy;  I'm  dying  for 
a  harmless  stimulant,  and  I'm  a  bad  enough  Ameri 
can  to  like  the  English  beverage  at  five  o'clock. 
What  do  you  say  to  the  first-at-hand  and  eminently 
respectable  tea-room  of  the  Knickerbocker?  " 

What  she  would  have  said  to  it  was,  "  No  ";  but 
Tyrrell  saw  that  too,  and  added: 

"  Everybody  goes  there,  you  know.  They  say 
they  go  to  drink  tea,  but  when  they  get  there  they 
all  tango." 

He  was  opening  a  little  wider  the  door  that  she 
had  thought  she  could  not  pass,  the  door  through 
which  she  could  escape  the  failure  that  approached 
outside  of  it.  He  was  asking  her  to  go  to  a  the- 
dansant.  Moreover,  he  was  asking  it  as  if  it  were 
quite  a  matter  of  course  among  the  men  and  women 
of  his  own  class.  After  all,  it  was  not  as  if  he  were 


JIM  215 

not  of  her  husband's  acquaintance;  somehow  or 
other  Charley  had  managed  to  meet  this  man.  In 
Ayton,  when  a  stranger  scraped  acquaintance  with 
you  on  the  street,  you  named  it  being  "  picked  up," 
and  pretended  to  your  friends  that  there  had  been 
a  formal  presentation;  but  Tyrrell  knew  quite  well 
who  she  was,  even  had  what  he  might  well  feel  was 
an  excellent  reason  for  talking  to  her.  If  he  thought 
he  had  been  rude,  that  day  at  the  office,  it  was  no 
more  than  she  had  thought  he  was :  she  owed  him 
the  chance  for  an  apology  and,  as  she  had  truthfully 
committed  herself,  Forty-second  Street  was  no  place 
for  the  granting  of  such  opportunities.  The  place 
he  moderately  called  respectable  was  more  than  re 
spectable;  Ayton  would  have  called  it  "select." 
This  was  no  disloyalty  to  Charley:  it  might  be  the 
means  toward  helping  Charley  that,  a  few  days 
ago,  she  had  so  eagerly  sought  and  so  wildly  re 
gretted  losing.  If  she  was  pleasant  to  the  man  of 
wealth,  the  man  of  wealth  would  be  the  more  dis 
posed  to  look  kindly  on  Charley's  invention.  The 
the-dansant 

Edith's  buckler  clattered  to  the  pavement.  Forty- 
second  Street,  on  which  so  many  similar  shields  have 
fallen,  was  too  full  of  other  noises  to  heed  its 
clatter. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  breathlessly — she  could  not  say, 
"  Thank  you  "— "  I  will  go  in." 

They  had  to  push  their  way  through  the  great 
lobby.  There  was  a  woman  on  every  chair,  and 
men  and  women  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  from 
wall  to  wall. 

"  Is  there  anything  going  on?  "  asked  Edith. 


216  JIM 

;'  There's  the  tango-tea  going  on,"  he  laughed 
over  his  shoulder  at  her,  as  he  plowed  the  road; 
"  and  it  goes  on  two  afternoons  in  every  week." 

They  reached  a  high-vaulted  room  decorated  in 
gilt  and  crimson.  About  it  were  many  and  small 
gilded  tables;  to  each  table  there  were  drawn  more 
gilded  chairs  than  could  comfortably  be  placed  there, 
and  not  one  of  them  was  unoccupied.  In  the 
crowded  space  between  the  rows  of  tables,  a  hun 
dred  or  more  couples  were  dancing  to  the  music 
of  an  orchestra  that  the  demands  of  the  dancers  had 
propelled  from  view.  The  women  were  bright 
with  those  daring  colors,  more  daringly  combined, 
which  the  fashion  of  the  day  exacted,  but  the  men 
tangoed  in  the  rumpled  sack  suits  in  which  they 
had  hurried  here  from  their  offices  as  soon  as  they 
could  decently  leave  their  work.  They  balanced  and 
seesawed,  slid  and  ambled,  without  the  farthest 
suspicion  of  being  ridiculous,  without  a  care  of  what 
the  spectators  said  or  thought. 

"  We  shall  have  to  wait  our  chance,"  said  Tyrrell, 
looking  over  the  tables.  "  Do  you  mind?  " 

They  were  standing  in  the  doorway,  and  already 
other  anxious  guests  were  thick  behind  them.  That 
Tyrrell  did  not  mind  was  enough  evident.  Edith, 
her  eyes  wide  upon  the  scene,  confessed  that  she 
did  not. 

"  What  a  good  time  they're  having,"  she  said. 

"  They're  doing  the  only  thing  that  anybody  now 
really  cares  about,"  Tyrrell  assured  her.  "  Life's 
become  nothing  but  learning  to  tango,  tangoing,  and 
resting  from  tangoing  so  as  to  be  able  to  tango 
again.  They  say  the  saloons  are  losing  money:  at 


JIM  217 

five  o'clock  your  tired  business-man  used  to  be  six- 
deep  at  the  bars  all  along  Broadway — and  now  look 
at  him." 

Immediately  in  front  of  her,  passed  a  couple  of 
dancers  that  might  well  have  been  the  models  for 
Jim's  picture.  Edith  said  to  herself  that  perhaps 
Jim  had  come  to  this  very  place  for  his  inspiration 
— Jim,  courted,  lucky,  successful.  Well,  she  could 
come  here,  too.  .  .  . 

"  But  I  needn't  tell  you  anything  about  tangoing," 
Tyrrell  was  saying.  "  You  tango,  too." 

She  gave  him  her  grateful  eyes: 

"  How  do  you  know  that?  " 

He  knew  it  because  he  had  assumed  that  every 
body  danced  the  new  dances,  but  he  saw  that  what 
he  had  said  pleased  her. 

"  I've  only  to  look  at  you,"  he  replied.  "  Will 
you  let  me  see  if  I'm  at  all  your  match?  " 

"  Oh,  no,  thank  you,"  she  said,  quickly,  she  could 
not  have  told  why;  "  I  don't  think  I  came  to  dance. 
Weren't  you  going  to  apologize  to  me?" 

The  crowd  behind  them  pressed  them  together. 
The  blare  of  the  music  made  them  bend  their  heads 
close  to  each  other. 

"What?"  said  Tyrrell.  "Before  I've  had  the 
tea  to  raise  my  courage?" 

'  You  needn't  do  it  till  you've  had  your  tea,  but 
meantime  you  might  tell  me  what  it's  all  about." 

"  It's  all  about  you,"  he  beautifully  explained. 

She  thoroughly  knew  what  he  wanted  to  apologize 
for,  but  it  suited  her  to  make  the  way  arduous: 

"  I  haven't  the  least  notion  what  you're  talking 
about." 


2i8  JIM 

'  Then  do  suppose  we  dance  it." 

"  No,  really." 

"You're  not  afraid?" 

'You  mean  afraid  to  dance?     But  you're  afraid 
to  talk." 

"  A  dance  might  do  in  place  of  the  tea." 

She  shook  her  head.  "  It  must  be  something  quite 
terrible." 

"  Just  one  dance?  "  he  pleaded. 

"  Not  three  steps,"  she  resolved.  It  was  really 
very  pleasant  to  have  a  man  of  this  sort  asking  fa 
vors  of  her,  and  the  music  was  insistent.  Before 
she  knew  what  she  was  adding,  she  had  added:  u  Un 
til  you've  told  me." 

"  Oh,  then!"  he  smiled.  He  seemed  to  be  mak 
ing  a  momentous  decision.  "  It  was  for  being  rude 
to  you  that  day  at  your  husband's  office." 

She  had  hoped  he  would  say  this.  She  had  seen 
an  advantage  in  that  form  of  statement.  She 
reached  for  the  advantage: 

"What  day?" 

With  a  frank  laugh,  he  dashed  it  from  her: 

''  Why,  that's  saying  you  didn't  see  me  there,  and 
if  you  didn't  see  me  there,  Mrs.  Vanaman,  you 
would  have  been  letting  me  speak  to  you  just  now 
without  the  least  idea  of  who  I  was."  She  flushed, 
and  he  read  the  meaning  of  her  flush.  "  Come," 
he  said:  "I'm  the  sinner  and  I  mustn't  forget  it. 
Don't  let  me  forget  my  place,  Mrs.  Vanaman:  your 
husband  never  lets  me.  But  he  manages  that  by 
being  so  appallingly  honest.  Of  course  you  saw  me, 
but  of  course  you  didn't  want  to  own  to  seeing  any 
such  atrocious  person." 


JIM  219 

"  Perhaps  that  was  it,"  said  Edith,  who  knew 
that  he  was  trying  to  help  her. 

"  You  saw  me,"  he  went  on,  "  and  you  naturally 
wanted  to  know  how  it  was  that  your  husband  had 
such  outrageous  acquaintances,  and  so,  when  I'd 
gone,  you  asked  the  stenographer " 

"Not  at  all!" 

"  Well,  then,  it  was  your  husband  that  you  asked 
who  I  was." 

"  I  didn't  ask  anybody.  When  Charley  came  in, 
the  stenographer  told  him  you'd  called." 

Tyrrell  became  more  serious.  "  At  any  rate,  I 
didn't  want  you  to  think  that  I  had  any  idea  at  that 
time  that  you  were  yourself,  you  know.  And  I  don't 
want  you  to  think  now  that  my  attentions  to  the 
charming  young  person  were  of  any  but  a  business 
nature." 

Edith  had  it  on  her  tongue  to  inquire  what  sort 
of  business  they  were;  but  she  substituted  another 
question: 

"  If  you  hadn't  any  idea  who  I  was,  when  did 
you  find  out? " 

"  Later,"  said  Tyrrell. 

"And  where?" 

"  I  did  what  I  accused  you  of  doing:  I  asked  Miss 
Girodet" 

Edith  shrugged  her  shoulders: 

"  You  see  Miss  Girodet  often?  " 

"  I  have  seen  her  once  since,  and  by  chance." 

"  And  you  asked  " — she  had  an  advantage  at  last 
and  would  not  release  it — "  you  asked  my  husband's 
stenographer  who  I  was?" 

"  Yes.     You  see,  I  wanted  to  find  out  in  order 


220  JIM 

to  apologize,  or  at  least  to  explain.  '  Explain '  is 
the  better  word,  isn't  it,  please?  "  As  she  was  about 
to  answer,  he  continued:  "And,  besides,  she  tells 
me  she's  not  your  husband's  stenographer  any  longer. 
I  do  hope  that  what  you  observed  didn't  make  you 
have  Mr.  Vanaman  get  rid  of  her." 

Again  he  had  the  better.  Edith's  denial  was  a 
shade  too  ready. 

"  I'm  glad  of  that,"  said  Tyrrell;  "  because  she's 
really  quite  all  right,  you  know." 

"  Did  she,"  Edith  could  not  refrain  from  asking, 
"  tell  you  that,  too,  when  you  met  her  once  and  by 
chance?  " 

"  It  wasn't  necessary,  Mrs.  Vanaman.  My  eyes 
told  me  and  my  ears.  And  the  chance  that  I  met 
her  by  was  a  collision  that  I  had  with  her  yester 
day  on  this  highly  respectable  dancing-floor." 

How  much  of  what  he  said  did  he  say  from  a 
sort  of  friendly  malice?  She  was  sure,  now,  that 
it  must  be  friendly,  but  equally  that  it  must  be  malice. 
The  question  was  one  of  quantity  alone.  Talking  to 
Tyrrell  was  like  playing  a  game.  It  was  happy 
children — she  recklessly  granted  the  adjective — 
romping  about  an  empty  house.  He  would  invite 
her  to  pursue  him  into  a  room  from  which  there 
was  no  exit  save  the  door  of  entrance.  Sure  that 
she  could  here  at  last  trap  him,  she  would  follow 
and  fling  herself  far  into  that  room,  only  to  find 
that  he  had  flattened  himself  against  the  wall  in 
which  the  door  was  cut:  before  she  could  turn  on 
him,  he  would  have  turned,  darted  out,  shut  the 
door  on  her,  and  be  galloping  down  a  distant  pas 
sage.  Yes,  it  was  a  game — a  game  that  she  had 


JIM  221 

played  and  liked  once  or  twice  before,  a  long  time 
since,  when  she  had  briefly  met  a  few  of  the  friends 
of  Jean  Dunbar. 

"So  that's  the  story,"  he  concluded;  "and  now 
you've  got  to  keep  your  promise  and  give  me  my 
dance." 

He  so  much  offered  what  she  wanted:  she  could 
reflect  for  but  the  briefest  moment  She  had  justi 
fied  her  coming  here.  If  there  was  no  reason  against 
her  coming  here,  there  could  be  none  against  her 
doing  what  was  done  by  all  the  others  that  came. 
Behind,  the  crowd  pressed;  in  front,  the  music  in 
vited;  Tyrrell,  standing  ready,  invited:  Edith  slipped 
into  his  waiting  arms. 

In  the  second  bar,  she  faltered  and  lost  step; 
but  he  righted  her  before  her  instant  shame  could 
enforce  the  error.  Then  the  magic  had  its  way  with 
her:  the  magic  of  the  music  and  a  perfect  partner. 
Without  thought,  without  the  wish  or  need  to  think, 
she  was  swept  across  the  room  on  a  rhythmic  wind. 
They  marched,  reversed,  marched  again;  Tyrrell 
was  feeling  his  way  with  her,  determining  what  she 
could  do  before  she  had  done  it,  passing  subtly  from 
the  simplest  steps  to  the  more  complicated.  And 
she  could  do  it,  she  could  do  it  all.  That  knowl 
edge  came  to  her  in  an  engulfing  triumph.  They 
swung,  they  dipped,  they  pirouetted.  Her  brain 
could  form  no  guess  as  to  what  the  next  evolution 
might  be,  and  did  not  have  to  form  one,  for  when 
the  next  evolution  came  her  feet,  whatever  it  was, 
proved  that  they  had  known  it  and  expected  it; 
they  welcomed  it  and  were  a  part  in  it.  The  flush 
deepened  on  her  cheeks;  her  eyes  mirrored  the  glory 


222  JIM 

of  her  success.  For  now,  for  at  least  this  brief 
minute,  nothing  else  in  all  the  world  mattered. 

The  thing  was  in  the  air.  The  women  with  their 
hats  on,  the  men  in  their  business-garb,  were  danc 
ing  as  freely  as  if  they  were  dressed  for  a  ballet, 
and  as  wildly.  Girls  on  their  way  home  from  school 
had  stopped  here  to  steal  this  half  hour  of  clandes 
tine  joy;  wives  balanced  before  their  lovers  while 
their  unremembered  husbands,  oblivious  of  them, 
embraced  the  wives  of  other  men  not  a  yard  away; 
mothers  clung  laughingly  to  partners  that,  in  other 
surroundings,  they  pretended  to  disdain,  and  spared 
not  a  glance  for  their  daughters  on  the  same  floor 
with  young  men  against  whom  the  mothers'  houses 
were  barred.  Strands  loosened  from  the  coiffures 
of  next  year's  debutantes  brushed  the  shining  pates 
of  elderly  partners.  Couples  of  the  age  of  grand 
parents  were  as  nimble  as  their  last  descendants. 
And  through  the  maze,  in  and  out,  never  interfer 
ing  with  another  pair  and  always  moving  in  abso 
lute  harmony  with  each  other,  more  alone  in  that 
crowd  than  they  could  have  felt  on  an  aeroplane, 
Edith  and  Tyrrell  passed,  breast  to  breast. 

The  music  stopped  with  what  seemed  to  Edith 
a  sudden  clash.  People  that  had  left  their  tables 
for  the  dancing-floor  ran  back  to  the  tilted  chairs 
that  reserved  their  places.  Everybody  was  talking 
at  once  and  laughing  breathlessly. 

"It  was  splendid!"  The  phrase  came  from 
Edith  without  foreknowledge. 

But  Tyrrell  did  not  take  the  compliment  to  him 
self:  he  applied  it  to  their  union: 

"  It  was  a  good  dance.     We're  what  they  call  a 


JIM  223 

first-rate  team,  aren't  we?  "  He  looked  about.  "  I 
wish  one  could  get  a  table.  Shall  we  go  into  the 
other  room  and  look  for  one  there?" 

"  Oh,  no !  "  said  Edith.  She  saw,  at  the  tables 
about  her,  women — by  station  "  good  "  women — or 
dering  drinks  with  the  easy  familiarity  of  boulevar- 
diers.  Them  she  would  not  imitate,  had  she  wished 
it,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  excitement  of  the 
dance  was  all  the  intoxicant  she  wanted.  "  I'm 
afraid  I've  got  to  be  going." 

"Not  yet!"  He  poured  on  her  his  full  gaze. 
"  Please !  " 

She  so  wanted  to  talk  as  he  did,  but  she  could 
only  repeat: 

"  I'm  afraid  I've  got  to  go." 

"So  soon?  It  can't  be  half-past  five."  He  met 
her  squarely:  "Why  do  you  have  to  go?  And 
where?  " 

"  Charley,"  she  began—"  he  wouldn't "  Her 

brown  eyes  met  Tyrrell's,  and  she  stopped. 

"  Oh,  bother  Charley!  "  he  laughed. 

Somehow  she  found  herself  laughing,  too. 

"  But  he  wouldn't—   -"  she  insisted. 

"Very  well,  then,"  said  Tyrrell;  "in  that  case 
we'll  have  one  more  dance  on  the  understanding 
that  we  won't  bother  him." 

If  he  had  not  said  it  with  a  smile,  she  would  have 
said  that  he  proposed  a  treasonable  conspiracy; 
she  would  have  refused  to  join  it;  but  Tyrrell's  smile 
made  all  the  difference:  it  belittled  Charley's  ob 
jections  without  scorning  Charley;  it  pointed  out 
that  half  of  the  best  people  in  this  room  were  doing 
much  what  Tyrrell  proposed;  it  banished  all  diffi- 


224  JIM 

culties  and  made  lightly  merry  of  every  scruple.  As 
plainly  as  if  he  had  spoken  it,  and  far  more  per 
suasively  than  any  speech,  Tyrrell  had  told  her: 

"It's  quite  all  right;  it's,  in  fact,  the  custom; 
we'll  simply  never  mention  this  to  Charley:  where's 
the  harm?" 

She  had  a  vision  of  the  Greenwich  Village  living- 
room,  of  the  husband  harassed,  bragging,  sodden. 
The  fires  of  Spring  burned  in  her  heart.  .  .  . 

"  Please,"  said  Tyrrell:  "  just  one  more  dance." 

"  Well — just  one  more,"  she  conceded. 

So,  when  the  music  started  again,  these  two  started 
with  it,  and  in  movements  more  intricate  than  they 
had  attempted  before.  Across  the  web  of  dancers 
they  shot  with  an  incredible  swiftness.  He  took  his 
arm  from  her  back,  tightened  his  hold  of  her  hand, 
sent  her  whirling  from  him  and  pulled  her  to  him. 
It  was  attack  and  surrender.  Again  he  held  her 
close  and  spun  her  'round.  Once  she  felt  his  hand 
quiver  and  looked  quickly  at  him:  he  blushed  like 
a  girl.  She  was  ashamed  to  know  that  this  ability 
to  make  him  quiver  did  not  shame  her;  she  was 
ashamed,  and  yet  it  was  a  shame  that  she  liked. 
Nor  could  it  last;  the  dance  permitted  nothing  to 
last.  Change  of  step  followed  upon  change.  He 
was  like  no  partner  that  she  had  ever  known;  for 
her  he  was  a  better  partner  than  the  thin  instructor 
at  the  school  in  Forty-fifth  Street:  Tyrrell  was  not 
a  force  pulling  her;  he  was  a  consciousness  usurp 
ing  her  own  and  directing  her  body  in  the  stead  of 
her  own  consciousness. 

It  was  an  appreciable  time,  when  this  dance  had 
ended,  before  her  consciousness  returned  to  its  do- 


JIM  225 

minion.  Then  she  was  leaning  against  the  wall  with 
Tyrrell  pleading: 

"One  more,  please?" 

But  this  was  a  moment  for  firmness.  Charley 
would  be  waiting  at  home  for  her;  he  would  ask 
questions. 

"  I  must  go  right  away,"  she  said. 

Perhaps  Tyrrell  knew  her  reasons.  He  changed 
his  plea. 

"To-morrow,  then?  It's  such  fun,  and  we  do 
work  so  well  together.  We  can  try  it  at " 

She  shook  her  head.  Somehow  it  seemed  im 
portant  not  to  make  an  appointment  for  so  early 
a  date. 

"  Then  how  about  the  next  day?  " 

"  I'll  meet  you  here,"  she  said,  "  on  Saturday  " — 
Charley  did  not  observe  the  Saturday  half  holiday 
— "  at  half-past  four." 

§  5.  It  was  nonsense  to  think  evil  of  this  tango- 
craze;  Charley  was  as  old-fashioned  as  his  father. 
The  dance  helped  people  out;  it  made  life  easier,  and 
Charley  must  be  made  so  to  see  it.  All  dances, 
Edith  reasoned,  as  the  crowded  car  hurried  her 
homeward,  were  mere  convention.  The  convention 
provided  that  a  woman  might  permit  a  man  to 
hold  her  tight  in  his  arms  before  a  roomful  of  peo 
ple  and  move  in  bodily  unison  with  him  to  the  music 
of  an  orchestra.  Very  well;  but  was  that  any  reason 
for  supposing  that  the  woman  would  proceed  to  do 
anything  of  the  same  sort  in  secret?  The  frank 
ness  of  it  really  provided  an  excellent  reason  for 
supposing  the  contrary.  The  tango  was  only  a 


226  JIM 

dance,  and,  besides,  everybody  was,  indeed,  doing 
it:  good  people,  really  "good"  people,  too. 

When  she  reached  her  lodging-house,  she  looked 
at  it  with  distaste;  but  she  comforted  herself  with 
the  thought  of  the  coming  Saturday.  She  went  up 
the  stairs  humming  "Too  Much  Mustard." 

§  6.  Charley  was  seated  at  the  table.  There  was 
a  bottle  and  a  glass  beside  him.  His  mouth  was 
drawn  down  at  the  corners;  the  veins  on  his  nose 
were  purple.  He  did  not  get  up  to  greet  her.  He 
said : 

14  Where  you  been,  anyhow?  " 

She  couldn't  tell  him  now — she  couldn't  do  it. 
Tyrrell  had  been  right. 

"  Out,"  she  said. 

Charley  snorted.  "  I  guess  I  ought  t'  know  that. 
I  been  waiting  long  enough  for  you.  I  asked  you 
where  you  been?  " 

She  could  not  take  her  gaze  from  him.  His  frog- 
like  eyes  stared  back  in  sullen  dullness.  His  clothes 
were  worn  and  rumpled.  His  face  was  set.  He 
was  a  picture  of  failure. 

"  I  went  for  a  walk,"  she  said. 

He  poured  himself  a  drink. 

"Have  one?"  he  asked,  nodding  at  the  bottle, 
but  not  offering  to  pour  for  her. 

All  the  intoxication  of  the  dance  had  gone  from 
her;  she  felt  the  need  of  whisky. 

'  Thanks,"  she  said,  and  took  some, 

The  fresh  dose  of  alcohol  changed,  for  a  mo 
ment,  his  mood.  His  glance  played  slowly  over 
her  and  unendurably  softened. 


JIM  227 

"  Don'  le's  go  out  for  dinner,"  he  said.  He  set 
tled  himself  in  his  chair.  "  Le's  have  a  good  talk. 
I'm  not  hungry."  He  beckoned  her  toward  him. 
"  Come  over  here  an'  sit  down  on  m'  knee.  I  re 
member  once  when  I  was  good  an'  hungry,  though. 
It  was  out  in  China,  an'  we'd  been  under  fire  all  day. 
We  used  to " 

"  I  won't  come  over  there!  "  she  flashed  at  him. 
"  And  I'm  sick  and  tired  of  hearing  what  you  used 
to  do!" 

For  a  moment  he  looked  at  her  in  round-eyed 
incomprehension.  Then  the  force  of  her  defiance 
beat  into  his  dulled  brain.  He  sprang  up,  his  eyes 
blazing. 

"  You  shut  your  mouth !  "  he  commanded.  "  I'm 
goin'  to  be  master  in  m'  own  house." 

But  Edith  laughed  at  him: 

"  You  call  this  your  '  house  ' !  " 

He  walked  unsteadily  around  the  table  to  her; 
but  she  stood  her  ground,  her  chin  up.  His  hand 
was  raised.  He  stopped  before  her,  swaying  ever 
so  slightly.  He  clenched  his  hand,  met  her  eyes, 
and  then  only  shook  a  finger  in  her  face. 

"  Jus'  a  moment,  please.  I  want  you  understand 
I  won't  have  you  talk  this  way  to  me.  You  stan' 

up  here  an'  say — an'  say Well,  you  know  what 

you  say,  an'  so  do  I,  all  right,  all  right.  I  won' 
stand  for  it;  that's  all:  I  won'  stand  for  it.  I'm 
not  the  soft  kind  that'll  stand  what  Jim  stood." 

She  saw  by  his  opened  hand  he  was  afraid  of 
her,  and  she  would  use  that  fear. 

"You're  drunk!"  she  cried.  "Drunk!  Aren't 
you  ashamed  of  yourself?  It's  all  you're  fit  for, 


228  JIM 

being  drunk  is,  and  you're  working  hard  at  it  all 
the  time,  while  I  stay  home  and  wash  your  dishes 
and  mend  your  clothes.  You'll  be  sick  in  a  min 
ute,  the  way  you  were  last  week,  and  the  place  will 
be  in  a  mess.  If  you  are,  you'll  clean  it  up  yourself. 
I'm  done  with  such  chores.  I'm  not  your  hired- 
girl."  Her  Ayton  vocabulary  returned  to  her,  and 
after  it  the  memory  of  her  life  after  leaving  Ayton. 
"  You  needn't  talk  about  Jim.  He  was  a  bad  lot, 
but  you  haven't  got  anything  on  him — not  a  thing. 
Go  to  bed.  Do  you  hear  me?  Go  to  bed!  " 

She  took  him  by  the  collar.  He  went  pale  with 
fright,  and  then  burst  into  the  tears  of  maudlin  re 
pentance.  He  tried  to  embrace  her,  and  when  she 
drew  away  he  caught  her  free  hand  and  covered 
it  with  damp  kisses. 

"  I'm  sorry,  Edith,"  he  whined.  "  I'm  sorry, 
truly  I  am.  I  love  you.  You  know  I  love  you.  My 
God,  but  I  love  you!  But  I'm  so  worried;  I'm  so 
worried.  .  .  ." 

She  pushed  him  into  the  next  room  and  let  him 
fall  upon  the  bed.  She  locked  the  door  on  him, 
came  back,  and  sat  down  at  the  window,  her  chin 
in  her  hands,  her  eyes  toward  the  sordid  street. 

What  had  happened  was  nothing  fresh.  It  was 
a  straw;  but  it  was  the  last  straw.  To  the  letter  of 
her  contract  with  him  she  would  be  loyal;  she  had 
to  be  loyal:  there  was  nowhere  for  her  to  go  but 
these  miserable  quarters.  When  the  ultimate  dis 
aster  overtook  him,  she  would  have  to  be  here  to 
suffer  it;  but  in  the  meantime  she  would  take  what 
harmless  joy  life  had  left  for  her,  and  she  would 
never  tell  Charley. 


THIRTEENTH  CHAPTER 

YET  she  let  Saturday  go  by  without  keeping  her 
appointment  to  meet  Tyrrell. 

Had  she  been  told  that  this  was  because 
of  any  feeling  that  to  keep  the  appointment  would 
be  doing  a  wrong,  she  would  have  denied  the  state 
ment  indignantly.  Had  she  been  accused  of  cow 
ardice,  she  would  have  denied  that.  She  would  have 
denied  the  suggestion  that  her  action  sprang  from 
a  desire  to  make  herself  less  facile  or  more  rare 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Bostonian.  She  would  have  de 
nied  any  motive  that  might  have  been  suggested,  and 
she  was  conscious  of  none;  but  she  did  not  keep  the 
appointment. 

She  sat  at  home  all  that  afternoon.  She  was  thor 
oughly  resolved  not  to  go  out;  but  she  was  annoyed 
when  the  entrance  of  Diana  made  going  out  im 
possible. 

"  You  wouldn't  come  to  see  me;  I  waited,  but  you 
wouldn't  come,"  said  Diana,  "  and  when  I  couldn't 
wait  any  longer,  I  had  to  come  to  you.  It's  be 
cause  I've  such  news  for  you." 

Diana  was  irresistibly  radiant.  Edith's  eyes, 
filled  with  memories  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  standards, 
would  not  have  approved  the  clothes  that  her  guest 
used  to  wear  and  thoroughly  disapproved  of  the 
drab  and  shapeless  gown  which  was  now  presented 
to  her,  but  the  face  above  it  was  too  wonderfully 
alight.  That  was  more  than  happy;  it  was  flut- 

229 


230  JIM 

teringly  happy,  to  be  sure,  but  it  was  also  proud 
and  lucidly  satisfied. 

Women  understand  these  things,  and  Edith  un 
derstood  this  one.  It  was  marvelous;  it  gave  the 
lie  to  all  Diana's  Principles,  but  there  it  shone, 
as  flagrant  as  an  electric-sign  on  Broadway. 

'  You've  married!  "  cried  Edith,  and  kissed  her. 

It  was  a  kiss  of  spontaneous  well-wishing,  even 
if  it  rose  from  a  heart  that,  at  the  words,  felt  the 
twinge  of  pain. 

"How  did  you  know?"  asked  Diana.  "There 
wasn't  a  line  in  the  papers.  We  couldn't  have  al 
lowed  anything  so  conventional  as  that." 

"  I  guessed  it  from  your  face,  you  goose,"  said 
Edith,  and  then:  "Who's  the  man?" 

'The  man?"  Diana's  echo  knew  of  but  one 
possible  man  among  all  men — the  superman,  the  sole 
example  of  his  "  type  ";  in  brief :  "  Archibald."  She 
sat  back,  serenely  waiting  for  Edith  to  recover  from 
the  stupefaction  of  that  glory. 

Edith  did  her  best  to  evince  stupefaction,  and 
indeed  she  experienced  a  proper  amount:  it  was 
only  the  kind  that  she  failed  in.  She  was  fond  of 
Diana;  without  agreeing  with  her  theories,  even 
sometimes  being  shocked  at  them,  scornful  of  them, 
or  more  fatally  bored  by  them,  she  had  a  high  re 
spect  for  the  mind  that  could  understand  them  and 
accept  them  as  vital  things,  and  she  had  a  still 
higher  respect  for  what  she  took  to  be  the  courage 
necessary  for  their  public  utterance.  Of  even  greater 
importance  to  her  was  her  personal  liking  and  grati 
tude :  she  liked  Diana,  as  she  would  have  said,  "  for 
herself  " — which  is  incontinently  the  surest  sort  of 


JIM  231 

liking — and  she  was  grateful  to  her  for  an  attitude, 
prompted  by  whatever  "  Principles,"  which  had  been 
maintained  in  the  face  of  circumstances  altogether 
too  terrible  for  Mrs.  Dunbar.  Yet  here  was  Diana, 
the  believer  in  "  free  unions,"  sacrificing  herself  in 
marriage  to  an  implausible  parasite  and  giving  her 
goodness  to  a  man  that  wore  a  yellow  silk  sweater 
and  posed  in  knickerbockers !  Comment  came  irre 
sistibly: 

"  Not  really  married — not  regularly?  " 

"Certainly!"  That,  too,  came  irresistibly:  be 
fore  her  brain  could  check  it,  Diana's  tone  resented 
the  implication  of  the  question. 

"Oh!"  Edith  was  confused;  she  wanted  to 
repair  her  error.  "  I  asked  only  because  I 

thought Well,  you  know  you  said  you  didn't 

believe  in  that  sort  of  thing." 

"  And  I  don't."  It  was  Diana's  brain  that  was 
talking  now.  "  And  of  course  neither  does  Archi 
bald.  We're  not  that  type.  We  hold  that  love  ought 
to  be  strong  and  free.  But,  you  see,  there's  my  posi 
tion.  After  all,  I'm  only  a  wage-slave,  and  the 
Library-Board  is  so  narrow  and  reactionary:  first  it 
wouldn't  have  assistants  that  were  married,  and  now 
it  won't  have  them  that  aren't.  You  know  what  I 
mean:  for  a  long  time  they  wouldn't  employ  us  if 
we  were  married  women,  and  now  that  they're 
letting  some  of  us  marry,  they'd  discharge  us 
if  we  took  the  end  without  the  means.  That's 
their  unreasonable  way:  they  can't  understand 
Principles." 

'  Then  you're  going  to  keep  on  working?  " 

"  I   would  not,"   said   Diana,   "  be   economically 


232  JIM 

dependent  on  any  man.  You  ought  to  know  me  bet 
ter  than  even  to  hint  it:  I  am  a  Freewoman." 

Edith  apologized.  She  wondered  whether,  in  this 
case,  the  economic  independence  of  the  wife  did  not 
consist  in  her  economic  exploitation  by  her  husband; 
so  she  was  not  surprised  at  what  Diana  said  next. 

It  developed  that  even  radical  women  took  less 
interest  in  an  attached  than  in  an  unattached  phi 
losopher:  women  formed  the  majority  of  the  ad 
mirers  that  had  been  subscribing  to  van  Houyz's 
support  while  he  wrote  at  his  Great  Work;  the  Great 
Work  was  by  no  means  finished;  it  had,  of  course,  to 
go  on,  and  the  subscribers  would  not  subscribe  after 
the  apostle  of  Woman's  Freedom  had  been  pre 
empted  by  any  union,  be  it  never  so  free. 

"  I  might  have  defied  the  Library-Board,"  Diana 
pursued,  "  but  Mother's  still  living  and  she  belongs 
to  her  own  Generation;  she  worships  all  its  Con 
ventions,  and  I  didn't  like  to  hurt  her.  I  might  have 
deceived  everybody,  but  I  felt  This  was  something 
too  sacred  to  lie  about,  and,  besides,  it  would  be 
sure  to  be  discovered.  So  you  see,  if  I  lost  my  job, 
we'd  be  hard  up.  The  subscriptions  had  all  stopped 
— all  but  splendid  Sylvia's.  As  Archibald  says,  the 
shadow  of  woman's  slavery  still  darkens  the  mind 
of  the  emancipated." 

"  I  see,"  said  Edith. 

"And  so  Archibald  pointed  out  to  me  how  we 
believed  that  love  ought  to  be  strong  and  free :  it 
ought  to  be  so  strong  that  it  could  bear  even  the 
weight  of  marriage,  and  so  free  that  a  mere  form 
of  words  before  a  magistrate  couldn't  really  chain 
it.  We  simply  had  a  magistrate  marry  us — just 


JIM  233 

formally,  you  understand — and  made  our  mutual 
mental  reservations.  In  that  way  we  could  please 
Mother  and  the  Board  and  still  be  true  to  our 
Principles.  Isn't  Archibald  ingenious?" 

What  Edith  said  was: 

"  So  you  consider  yourself  quite  free?  " 

"Absolutely,"  Diana  nodded:  she  accented  the 
third  syllable. 

"  And  you  let  your  husband  be  free,  too?  " 

"  Of  course.  I  wouldn't  compromise.  I  wouldn't 
compromise  with  sacred  things.  Ours  is  a  free 
union.  I  know  Archibald  will  never  use  his  free 
dom — but  he's  free." 

Edith  comprehended  a  great  deal  now.  She  com 
prehended  the  increased  ugliness  of  Diana's  clothes: 
did  not  Diana's  husband  hold  that  a  fair  face  should 
suffer  from  no  dressmaker's  competition?  It  was 
an  excellent  way  of  concealing  one's  wife's  beauty 
from  predatory  eyes  and  saving  it  all  for  oneself. 
Assuredly  Archibald  was  ingenious ! 

Diana  was  running  on  and  over  with  her  happi 
ness.  She  had  a  few  damning  words  of  scorn  for 
the  weak-kneed  subscribers  to  the  Great  Work  and 
no  end  of  praise  for  Sylvia  Tytus:  u  The  only  real 
Radical  of  them  all,  my  dear,  and  I  adore  her." 
Finally  she  came  to  the  point  at  which  Edith  had 
throughout  this  interview  feared  she  would  arrive: 
to  the  Wimminist  Leeg  and  Edith's  reasons  for 
never  joining  and  bringing  Charley. 

There  was  no  longer  a  hope  of  evasion.  Indeed, 
there  was  small  desire  for  one. 

"  He  wouldn't  hear  pf  it,"  saip]  Edith. 


234  JIM 

"  Wouldn't Diana  refused  to  credit  it : 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"  I  mean  he  hates  those  things;  I  mean  I  suppose 

he's  what  you  call  a  reactionary,  and She 

could  have  almost  let  her  annoyance  at  Diana's 
marriage  add,  "  I'm  one,  too,"  but  she  said:  "  And 
he  wouldn't  permit  me  to  go  alone.  He  just  wouldn't 
have  it,  if  I  asked  him;  that's  all." 

It  served,  at  all  events,  to  end  the  call  before 
Charley  could  return  home  and  find  there  a  caller 
he  disliked.  Diana  stiffly  rose. 

"  I  never  thought  it,"  she  said.  "  I  never  thought 
it  of  him,  and  I  certainly  never  thought  it  of  you. 
My  dear,  I  couldn't  guess  that  you  belonged  to  the 
Servile  Type.  Why,  he's — he's  no  better  than  your 
First  One!  And  after  all  you've  done  for  Prin 
ciple!" 

§  2.  Edith  might  say  to  herself  that  Diana  was 
now  the  last  one  to  talk  of  Principle.  She  did  say 
it.  She  said  it,  for  days  after  her  caller  had  gone, 
vehemently.  But  the  Parthian  shot  rankled.  She 
saw  her  husband  with  a  vision  ever  clearer.  She 
would  be  no  man's  slave.  .  .  . 

She  drank  a  little  more  than  she  had  been  drink 
ing:  she  was  so  hopeless  and  so  worn  out.  She 
let  the  memory  of  Diana's  happiness  insist  upon 
comparison  with  her  own  lot.  She  thought  that  the 
renascence  of  her  beauty  was  losing  its  force,  and 
she  bought  and  used  some  rouge.  On  the  next 
Wednesday — it  was  one  of  the  days  when  Charley 
was  to  sleep  at  his  father's  house— she  went  to  the 
Knickerbocker. 


JIM  235 

It  was  the  same  scene  that  she  had  been  a  part 
of  a  week  ago.  The  same  people  were  riotously 
performing  the  same  riotous  dances  to  the  same 
riotous  music.  It  seemed  to  Edith  as  if  they  had 
never  stopped.  There  were  the  schoolgirls,  the 
mothers,  the  grandparents;  there  was  that  couple 
which  might  have  served  for  the  models  of  Jim's 
picture.  Edith  had  said  to  herself  that  she  was  there 
only  to  look  on,  but  when  she  heard  somebody  point 
out  one  pair  of  dancers  as  professionals,  she  eyed 
them  enviously  and  began  to  eye  the  other  dancers 
hungrily. 

In  the  room  were  many  women  as  openly  unat 
tended  as  she  was,  and  Edith  noticed  that  some  of 
these  freely  accepted,  sometimes  almost  as  freely 
sought,  dancing-invitations  from  men  that  had  come 
alone.  When  a  sleek  lad  approached  her,  she  in 
dignantly  refused  him:  she  felt  soiled  by  his 
address. 

She  saw  George  Mertcheson  and  tried  to  hide 
from  him,  but  this  time  he  recognized  .her  easily 
enough.  He  recognized  her  with  the  whole  crowd  be 
tween  them  and  advanced  in  his  loose-jointed  stride. 
The  exercise  of  dancing  had  heated  him:  his  straight 
hair  stood  out  from  his  head,  and  his  sallow  cheeks 
were  faintly  flushed.  A  smile  crowned  his  insignifi 
cant  chin. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said  as  he  had  said  when  she  went 
to  his  office.  "  Where  did  you  drop  from?  " 

Edith  saw  that  he  meant  superbly  to  ignore  the 
indignation  in  which  she  had  parted  from  him. 
That  was  George's  way:  he  was  the  sort  that  smile 


236  JIM 

and  wait.  His  unfinished  ears  seemed  to  be  trying 
harder  than  ever  to  escape  from  his  head. 

"  I  often  come  here,"  said  Edith.  She  looked 
straight  across  the  room,  but  she  thought  that  the 
wart  on  his  nose  was  growing. 

"  Well,  that's  good.  Now  we  can  have  a  dance 
once  in  a  while." 

"  I'm  not  dancing." 

His  eyelids  had  their  nervous  flicker: 

"Oh,  come  on!" 

"  I  am  not  dancing." 

§  3.  Tyrrell  rescued  her.  It  was  a  long  time  since 
she  had  been  so  glad  to  see  anyone.  She  was  grate 
ful  for  his  coming;  grateful,  too,  because,  as  he  led 
her  away,  he  made  no  comment  on  the  man  that  had 
been  talking  to  her  and  asked  no  question  as  to  why 
she  had  failed  to  keep  her  appointment  for  Sat 
urday.  He  seemed  tolerantly  to  understand. 

"You'll  dance?" 

It  was  as  if  she  were  pushed  into  his  arms — 
pushed  there  by  all  the  horror  of  her  home,  by  the 
pursuit  of  Mertcheson,  by  the  weight  of  unendur 
able  days,  and  the  pressure  of  advancing  penury. 
She  went  a  timid  step  forward;  the  music  crashed 
into  a  wild  revel. 

Tyrrell  seized  her,  and  the  world  retreated.  He 
held  her  tight;  he  let  her  go.  He  flung  her  from 
him  and  drew  her  back.  Again  they  were  one;  again 
his  consciousness  struck  hers  into  abeyance  and  ruled 
her  body. 

Once,  in  a  flying  instant,  she  saw  his  eyes  and 
read  a  hot  passion  there.  He  realized  that  she 


JIM  237 

read  it;  but  he  pretended  nothing,  not  even  that  he 
did  not  know  her  reading.  Without  lessening  their 
pace,  he  said: 

"  I'm  sorry." 

11  That's  all  right,"  she  heard  herself  saying  as 
he  seized  her  once  more.  "  It  doesn't  matter." 

Why  did  she  think  it  did  not  matter?  A  few 
months  ago,  one  month  ago,  she  would  have  thought 
it  mattered  a  great  deal.  Why  did  she  think  it  did 
not  matter  now?  She  could  find  no  answer  and  no 
time  for  debate. 

He  spun  her  body  about  his  own.  The  dance  be 
came  a  frenzy.  She  was  off  her  feet:  he  was  whirl 
ing  her  in  his  arms.  She  felt  herself  falling,  only 
to  be  caught  up,  in  perfect  time  and  unison  with  the 
music  and  with  him,  and  whirled  again  and  thrown 
again,  and  again  clutched  close.  She  ended  breath 
less,  almost  fainting,  yet  tingling  with  the  joy  of  it 
and  not  deaf  to  the  whispered  commendations  of  the 
onlookers  that  had  been  watching  her  and  Tyrrell, 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  the  other  dancers  on  the 
floor. 

"  Are  you  doing  anything  this  evening? "  her 
partner  was  asking. 

Still  too  short  of  breath  to  answer,  she  only  shook 
her  head. 

"  Then  I'll  tell  you  what  we'll  do :  we'll  have  a 
quiet  dinner  somewhere  where  there  is  a  good 
cabaret  and  then  we'll  charter  a  taxi  and  make  the 
Grand  Tour  of  the  tango-palaces." 

Edith,  not  given  to  self-analysis,  did  have  mo 
ments,  long  afterward,  when  she  sought  the  reasons 
for  her  consent,  or,  rather,  tried  to  select,  from 


238  JIM 

the  many  forces  that  in  those  days  conquered  her 
control,  the  one  force  to  which  the  blame  for  this 
action  could  most  justly  be  attributed.  She  never 
succeeded.  There  was  the  old  desire  for  ascend 
ency  over  circumstance,  the  perjury  in  the  divorce- 
suit  with  its  progeny  of  deception :  Charley's  nec 
essary  deception  and  hers  of  his  father,  of  their 
dwindling  social  world,  eventually  and  inevitably  of 
each  other.  Everything  so  perfectly  resulted  from 
everything  else:  there  were  the  other  forces — the 
poverty  depending  upon  the  deception  of  the  elder 
Vanaman,  itself  with  the  other  lies  dependent  upon 
the  initial  perjury,  and  the  need,  the  keenly  actual 
need,  of  some  relief,  which  the  pressure  of  poverty 
created.  It  intensified  to  an  abnormal  degree  the 
purely  human  appetite  for  joy;  it  made  for  more 
failure,  as  only  failure  can,  and  sharpened  her  indi 
vidual  fear  and  hatred  of  failure;  it  created  the 
debts  and  the  steadily  approaching  financial  collapse, 
and  cultivated  her  horror  of  them;  it  effected  the 
slow  uncovering  of  the  real  Charley  with  that  un- 
covering's  suspicions  of  unfounded  bombast,  its  cer 
tainties  of  drunkenness,  weakness,  futility.  The  chil 
dren  of  what  she  had  done  at  law,  or  what  the  law, 
as  she  put  it,  had  made  her  do,  numbered  among 
them  the  scorn  and  loss  of  such  friends  as  Mrs. 
Dunbar,  the  loss  of  the  very  things  that  she  had  done 
it  all  to  gain — even,  at  last,  the  ill-concealed  scorn 
of  Diana.  They  made  her  feel  Diana's  happiness, 
reasonless  though  such  a  happiness  might  be,  as  a 
goad  in  her  own  side;  they  sharpened  tiny  arrows 
of  truth  in  the  arsenal  of  Diana's  now  recalled,  if 
once  derided,  talk  of  woman's  freedom.  They  had 


JIM  239 

brought  Edith  to  this  floor,  to  the  example  of  the 
gay  "  best  people,"  as  well  as  the  gay  worst,  about 
her;  to  the  maddening  music;  the  seductive  frenzy 
of  the  dance;  the  thrill  of  the  recent  contact,  still 
tingling  in  every  least  muscle  of  her  body;  to  Tyr 
rell  himself,  appreciative,  considerate,  confident,  a 
gentleman,  apparently  determined  to  go  not  too  far, 
and  demonstrably  the  symbol  of  everything  from 
which  she  had  been  thwarted.  They  led  forward 
to  Tyrrell,  and  they  led  back,  they  converged  at 
their  source,  in  Jim.  .  .  . 

Edith,  just  now,  experienced  nothing  save  the  total 
result.  She  made  no  effort  to  disentangle,  differ 
entiate.  It  was  enough,  it  was  too  much,  that  the 
finer  loyalty  had  been  shorn  of  its  justification,  and 
that  the  mere  instinct  toward  traditional  loyalty,  the 
product  of  early  conventional  environment — weak 
ened  by  the  action  which  drove  her  to  her  first 
divorce  and  by  all  the  first  divorce  had  entailed — 
stopped,  as  yet,  only  short  of  overt,  physical  dis 
loyalty. 

"  Thanks,"  she  said,  "  that  would  be  fun." 

§  4.  They  went  to  the  Martinique  for  dinner, 
where  they  sat  in  an  oak-wainscoted  cellar  among 
clattering  knives  and  forks,  and,  presently,  the  din 
of  a  score  of  short-skirted  cabaret-performers,  who 
sang  and  danced  on  a  stage  and  paraded  about  the 
room,  jangling  sleigh-bells  in  the  diners'  ears.  Its 
only  simple  note  was  the  costly  simplicity  of  the 
meal  that  Tyrrell  ordered :  that  was  like  what  Jim 
used  to  order  when  he  had  a  windfall,  and  wholly 
unlike  the  plunges  that  Charley  used  to  make  when, 


240  JIM 

in  the  days  of  his  surreptitious  courtship,  he  unex 
pectedly  got  hold  of  some  money. 

Then  they  began  their  tour.  They  went  to  one 
garish  place  after  another,  Tyrrell's  bearing  always 
lending  her  the  air  of  polished  detachment  at  the 
very  moments  of  their  taking  glad  part  in  the  revel 
ries.  It  was  light  and  hurry.  Guests  of  every  sort 
— and  there  were  all  sorts  at  each  place — ate  rapidly 
with  the  air  that  they  were  doing  it  simply  to  fortify 
themselves  for  the  next  dance.  These  gulped  drinks 
and  dashed  back  upon  the  floor  so  soon  as  the  sweat 
ing  musicians  could  catch  breath  to  resume  their 
playing. 

And  Edith  danced  with  Tyrrell.  At  first  she 
feared  to;  then  she  wanted  to;  but  through  all  that 
earlier  portion  of  the  evening  she  encountered  in 
him  no  repetition  of  the  indiscretion  at  the  Knicker 
bocker. 

They  went  to  a  place  called  Reisenweber's  and 
to  that  called  Bustanoby's;  they  visited  a  half-dozen 
cafes-dansants.  At  some  the  dancers  were  brilliant 
in  evening-clothes  and  jewels  and  ball-gowns;  at 
others  only  the  women  had  attempted  decoration 
and  that  in  a  manner  which  would  permit  their  going 
home — if  they  ever  went  home,  or  had  homes  to  go 
to — in  the  street-car  or  afoot;  but  at  most  the  several 
classes  inextricably  mingled.  Here  were  rich  and 
poor,  good  and  bad,  shopgirls  and  women  of  wealthy 
leisure,  debutantes,  and  street-walkers;  and  here 
were  wealthy  men  and  procurers;  bank-clerks,  shop- 
clerks,  released  for  the  night  from  gray  routine  and 
running  to  these  restaurants  as  children  run  from 
school  to  play,  trying  to  forget  to-morrow.  Where 


JIM  241 

did  the  poorer  get  the  money?  Whence  did  the 
older  snatch  the  energy?  How  would  the  workers 
ever  get  to  work  on  time?  And  how  would  they 
ever  do  their  work  when  they  got  to  it? 

"  They  won't,"  laughed  Tyrrell,  when  she  asked 
him.  "  And  they'll  be  scolded  and  docked  for  it  by 
employers  who  are  unable  to  go  through  with  their 
own  work — and  all  the  crosser  for  that — because 
they'll  have  been  tangoing,  too." 

At  some  places  the  women  smoked;  at  all  they 
drank.  At  several  Tyrrell  bowed  to  acquaintances, 
and  once  he  introduced  her  to  a  quite  colorless  friend 
who  asked  a  dance,  hung  on  her,  hopped  about  out 
of  time,  and  bumped  her  into  other  dancers — things 
that  could  not  happen  when  she  and  Tyrrell  danced 
together. 

As  the  night  deepened,  the  dancing  was  intensi 
fied.  A  few  of  the  revelers  remained  graceful,  but 
some  were  childish  or  maudlin  in  their  contortions, 
and  more  were  vicious.  Mere  abandon  became  odi 
ous  posturing;  the  tango  of  the  Knickerbocker  de 
scended  to  the  grotesquely  named  and  acted  "  Bunny 
Hug";  a  pair  of  dancers  became  a  quadruped.  At 
one  of  the  last  places  that  Tyrrell  and  Edith  visited 
the  gyrations  were  freely  vile.  The  men  sweated, 
the  women  crooned  the  music.  Eyes  were  either 
bright  or  filmy,  faces  and  figures  yielding  or  pro 
vocative;  the  fact  that  these  dancers  were  clothed 
became  the  final  touch  of  lewdness.  For  anybody 
not  sharing  the  madness,  it  was  an  incredible  spec 
tacle,  a  nightmare. 

Tyrrell  did  not  share  it  to  the  prevailing  degree. 


242  JIM 

He  took  her  away,  but  masked  his  shame,  as  the 
American  will,  with  a  word  of  derision. 

"  The  poor  things  call  that  tangoing,"  he  said. 
"  We'll  go  to  one  real  place  for  one  more  real  dance, 
just  to  obliterate  the  impression,  Mrs.  Vanaman." 

To  Edith  the  scene  had  evoked  memories.  Once, 
as  a  small  girl,  she  had  furtively  gone  to  look  on 
at  a  dance  given  by  one  of  the  Ayton  volunteer  fire- 
companies:  it  was  decorum  to  this.  And  she  re 
membered  how,  not  long  afterward,  a  girl  of  an 
other  faith  than  her  own  had  taken  her  to  a  pro 
tracted  revival  at  the  end  of  which  the  congregation 
had  behaved  as  if  animated  by  a  spirit  correlative 
to  that  which  animated  these  dancers.  Even  as  a 
child  it  had  disgusted  her  without  explaining  itself 
to  her.  When  Tyrrell  spoke  she  was  trying  hard 
to  apologize  to  herself  for  the  dancers  at  whom  she 
now  was  looking;  she  was  saying  that,  at  the  best 
Ayton  dances,  a  girl  was  certain  to  be  kissed  in  a 
corner,  whereas  the  present  convention  was  at  all 
events  more  honest;  but  she  had  not  convinced  her 
self  and  she  was  glad  to  have  the  Bostonian  feel 
as  he  plainly  did  feel. 

The  place  that  he  last  of  all  took  her  to  obliter 
ated  the  ugly  impression  made  by  its  predecessor 
and  restored,  almost  instantly,  the  magic  she  had 
nearly  lost.  It  was  smaller,  quieter,  and  the  people 
in  it  were  of  a  better  sort.  They  danced  as  wildly, 
but  they  danced  with  grace.  They  revived  the  poetry 
and  the  charm. 

He  moved  with  her  on  the  crowded  floor  among 
soft  lights  and  dancers  quietly  dressed.  The  air  was 
perfumed  and  the  music  gentle.  With  the  first  steps 


JIM  243 

she  forgot  the  scene  they  had  left  behind,  forgot 
everything  but  the  joy  of  rhythmic  music  and  escape. 
The  vulgar  faded;  for  these  few  minutes  she  would 
be  happy,  and  nobody  that  mattered  would  ever 
know.  Tyrrell  would  not  tell  Charley;  this  was 
their  secret.  Here  was  at  least  respite  from  despair. 
Her  brown  eyes  kindled;  a  genuine  flush  returned 
to  her  cheeks;  youth  returned:  she  was  beautiful. 

Well  as  they  had  danced  together  before,  they 
had  never  danced  so  well  as  now.  They  composed 
dances  as  they  went  along,  in  absolute  and  gracious 
harmony;  they  made  those  delicate  impromptu  varia 
tions  which  are  like  the  discoveries  of  innocent  lovers 
and  the  opportunity  for  which  is  the  secret  of  the 
New  Dancing's  attraction.  Slowly,  as  before,  her 
will  became  the  creature  of  his  and  his  directed  her. 
His  body  was  the  master — his  soul,  she  said,  and 
then  was  deliciously  frightened  at  the  thought. 
Their  movements  had  the  dignity  of  a  minuet,  then 
quickened  into  something  all  their  own — all  his.  Her 
every  muscle  was  in  rhythm  with  him.  She  felt  the 
warmth  of  his  body  against  hers,  the  play  of  the 
muscles  in  his  legs,  the  beating  of  his  heart,  the 
hot  breath  that  now  struck  her  flaming  cheeks. .  Their 
thighs  crossed,  she  held  him  with  her  eyes,  as  he 
held  her  with  his  will,  and  she  was  glad  to  hold 
him  and  to  have  his  wise,  vibrant  being  holding  her. 
He  drew  her  closer.  She  found  that  he  was  look 
ing  at  her  oddly:  his  glance  was  half  veiled.  Tighter 
he  held  her  and  tighter;  his  lips  parted.  She  remem 
bered  life  again;  she  was  so  tired  of  it.  ... 

She  drew  hastily  away.     She  stopped  dancing. 

"  Let's  sit  down,"  she  panted,  but  not  from  the 


244  JIM 

exercise  of  the  dance.  "  I'm  tired.  I  think  I'd  bet 
ter  be  going  home." 

His  agreement  was  instant,  unquestioning.  His 
face  had  changed,  at  her  word,  to  the  face  she  had 
known  when  they  talked  on  Forty-second  Street. 

"  I  do  hope  I  haven't  overdanced  you,"  he  said. 

She  denied  that,  and  until  the  taxi  came  she  talked 
heedlessly,  lightly,  saying  anything  to  cover  the  evi 
dences  of  what  she  felt.  She  would  not  let  him  see 
her  home,  protest  as  he  did,  and  he  asked  no  em 
barrassing  questions. 

§  5.  She  was  not  clear  precisely  what  it  was  she 
had  felt;  but  she  knew  that  she  had  passed  through 
the  door  of  light  and  could  pass  through  it  again. 
She  would  have  to  come  back;  but  she  could  return 
through  it  as  often  as  she  chose. 

She  chose  frequently,  and  she  found  Tyrrell  al 
ways  politely  eager  and  unquestioning.  No  dance 
ever  again  moved  him  as  that  last  dance  of  their 
first  evening  together  had  moved  him,  or,  if  one 
did,  he  was  sufficiently  lord  of  himself  to  hide  the 
effect  of  it.  Their  talk  was  of  indifferent  things,  and 
once  she  quickened  his  interest  in  the  Vanaman 
Sounder.  Under  Tyrrell's  care,  she  came  to  know 
intimately  the  thes-dansants  at  the  Ritz-Carlton,  the 
Knickerbocker,  and  Delmonico's.  In  the  women's- 
rooms  at  these  places  she  met  and  made  some  genu 
ine  acquaintances  with  women  not  unlike  herself, 
unhappy  women  restlessly  in  quest  of  a  restless  hap 
piness.  The  easy  air  of  the  tango-teas  made  such 
friendships  facile,  and,  even  in  her  worst  moments 
at  home,  Edith's  pulses  beat  to  tango-time.  She 


JIM  245 

rarely  contrasted  this  secret  life  with  her  existence 
in  the  Greenwich  Village  lodgings,  and  when  she  did 
it  was  to  tell  herself  that  she  had  not  fallen  in  love 
with  anybody  else :  she  had  merely  fallen  out  of  love 
with  Charley.  Once,  when  she  first  knew  her  pres 
ent  husband,  she  had  conceived  of  love  as  an  ele 
mental  force  that  sweeps  from  the  infinite,  through 
the  universe,  catching  up  and  engulfing  such  frail 
human  estrays  as  chance  in  its  path  and  sweeping 
them  forward  to  its  own  ends.  Then  she  saw  that, 
in  its  power,  a  pair  of  lovers  were  as  helpless  as 
two  bits  of  driftwood  on  a  tidal  wave;  now  she  saw 
the  necessary  consequence:  that  the  wave,  having 
borne  them  with  it,  reckless  of  their  will,  finally, 
when  it  is  through  with  them,  tosses  them  away. 


FOURTEENTH  CHAPTER 

ONCE,  on  an  afternoon  at  the  Ritz-Carlton, 
when  Tyrrell  had  left  her  for  a  few  minutes 
to  telephone,  Edith  saw  van  Houyz  and 
Sylvia  Tytus  at  a  nearby  table.  There  was  a 
champagne-pail  beside  them,  and  the  Philosopher 
was  counting  out,  with  commendable  slowness,  and 
an  unproductive  glance  toward  his  companion,  the 
money  for  the  bill.  It  was  four  o'clock :  which  meant 
that  Diana  was  still  safely  at  work.  Van  Houyz, 
his  glance  failing  to  wheedle  Sylvia,  paid:  which 
meant  that  Diana  paid.  Champagne  and  a  tango- 
tea:  Edith  loathed  the  woman  for  her  treachery  to 
friendship  and  the  man  for  his  treason  to  marriage. 

"  Of  course  Diana  would  say  he  might,"  Edith 
reflected;  "but  of  course  she'd  never  think  he 
would." 

Even  their  clothes  were  voluble.  Sylvia,  smiling 
with  every  one  of  her  prominent  teeth,  could  never 
look  the  beauty  Diana  held  her  to  be,  but  she  was 
dressed  in  a  gown  so  fashionable  that  she  would 
not  have  risked  it  at  the  Radical  Club ;  and  the  curl 
ing  hair  and  beard  of  Woman's  evangel  surmounted 
a  suit  of  strict  conventionality. 

"  I'll  bet  Diana  doesn't  know  a  thing  about  this 
picnic,"  thought  Edith.  "  Of  course  they've  come 
up  here  to  get  as  far  away  as  they  can.  They  think 
this  is  the  last  place  they'd  meet  any  of  their  Radical 
friends  in.  I've  a  notion  to  let  them  see  me." 

246 


JIM  247 

At  once  she  had  the  chance.  Van  Houyz  rose 
and  left  a  tip  that  the  waiter  choked  over.  Sylvia 
rose,  too.  The  pair  came  toward  the  door  near 
which  Edith  was  standing. 

"How  do  you  do?"  said  Edith.  She  advanced 
bravely  and  offered  her  hand. 

The  effect  disappointed  her.  Sylvia's  immediate 
frigidity  was  unmistakably  not  fear  of  scandal:  it 
was  jealousy  for  her  prize.  Van  Houyz's  fishy  grin 
— Edith  comprehended  this  with  a  disconcerting 
pang — accepted  her  as  being  at  this  place  on  the  same 
sort  of  errand  that  brought  him. 

"  How  sweet  to  see  you  here !  "  He  squeezed  her 
hand. 

She  understood  his  meaning.  He  meant:  "  We're 
in  the  same  glass-house :  of  course  we  won't  stone  our 
common  shelter."  She  would  not  let  him  have  it 
so.  She  said: 

"  I'm  coming  'round  to  see  you  and  Diana  as  soon 
as  I  have  a  moment  to  spare.  I  haven't  congratu 
lated  you  yet.  She's  the  finest  woman  I  know." 
Edith,  with  prodigious  innocence,  looked  beyond 
him.  "  But  where  is  she?  " 

Van  Houyz  was  imperturbable : 

"She  has  her  duties  to  the  public;  she's  at  the 
library.  How's  Mr.  Vanaman?" 

"  Quite  well.  He'll  be  back  in  a  minute.  Won't 
you  wait?  He'd  be  so  glad  to  meet  Miss  Tytus  and 
you  again." 

"  I'm  afraid  we  can't." — It  was  Sylvia  who  in 
terposed:  her  projecting  teeth  looked  dangerous. — 
"  We  have  to  hurry  to  the  library  to  meet  Diana." 

("  What  a  lie!  "  thought  Edith.     "  I  hope  Mr. 


248  JIM 

Tyrrell  doesn't  come  just  yet.  I  must  nail  that  lie, 
even  if  they  nail  mine.") 

"Yes,"  said  the  Philosopher:  "we  shall  have  to 
hurry." 

Edith  held  his  hand. 

"  Do  you  know,  I  scarcely  recognized  you?  "  she 
said.  "  You  weren't  wearing  knickers  when  Diana 
and  you  called  on  me,  and  you're  not  wearing  them 
now.  Don't  tell  me  you've  given  them  up." 

"  If  I'd  known  you  would  be  here,  Mrs.  Vanaman, 
I  should  have  worn  them.  But,  then,  how  could  I 
guess  it?  " 

Sylvia  snarled. 

"  You  see,"  Edith  explained,  "  knickers  are  only 
the  half  of  long  trousers,  and  I  thought  you  believed 
in  them,  Mr.  van  Houyz,  on  the  principle  of  the 
less  the  better." 

"  We  don't  believe  in  clothes  at  all,"  Sylvia  an 
swered  for  him.  "  Clothes  only  hide  the  body;  the 
body  is  part  of  the  self;  to  hide  the  self  is  to  deceive. 
Therefore,  clothes  make  us  liars."  She  tugged  at 
the  Philosopher's  disengaged  arm. 

"  Still,"  said  Edith,  as  she  looked  at  Sylvia's  split- 
skirt,  "  they  do  keep  us  warm,  don't  they?  " 

"  We  have  to  hurry,"  said  Sylvia. 

§  2.    At  home  the  end  seemed  very  near. 

Charley  drank  steadily.  His  face,  though  still 
fat,  was  drawn  and  haggard,  the  bags  under  his 
eyes  were  purple.  His  creditors  threatened;  the 
invention  was  motionless.  For  one-half  the  time 
spasms  of  passion  for  Edith  alternated  with  fits  of 
jealousy,  prompted  by  the  idea  that  she  regretted 


JIM  249 

Jim;  for  the  other  half  he  was  breast-deep  in  leth 
argy.  He  had  made,  to  gain  his  wife,  the  largest 
sacrifice  that  he  knew  how  to  make,  and  it  proved, 
in  the  face  of  disproportionate  rewards,  a  larger 
sacrifice  than  his  large  love  could  sustain.  If  there 
were  not  an  immediate  financial  relief,  there  would 
be  a  speedy  emotional  collapse. 

Edith  maintained  her  relations  with  Tyrrell,  who 
kept  them  where  she  wished:  on  the  plane  of  what 
he  considered  good-fellowship.  She  suffered  with 
him  no  descent  to  the  pit  of  overt  disloyalty;  she 
understood  that  he  had  begun  by  being  only  casually 
interested  in  her,  as  he  would  have  been  in  any 
pretty  woman,  and  that  he  had  ended  in  a  fondness 
for  her  company  because  she  was  an  excellent 
dancing-partner.  But  there  were  troubles  elsewhere : 
the  landlady  threatened  and  might  at  any  moment 
expose  her  embezzlement  to  Charley,  and  the  com 
ing  of  Charley's  business-disaster,  she  knew,  could 
now  be  a  question  of  but  a  very  short  time.  She 
tried  to  shut  her  mind  to  it  and  keep  up  the  out 
ward  signs  of  peace.  In  order  to  bear,  with  at  least 
passivity,  the  assaults  of  her  husband's  intermittent 
passion,  she  drank  with  him  freely,  and  to  cover  the 
evidences  of  this  she  resorted  to  frequent  cosmetics. 

There  came  a  flash  of  hope.  It  came  with  Char 
ley  when,  one  noonday,  he  arrived  home  unexpectedly 
for  luncheon. 

His  cheeks  were  tinged  with  the  excitement  of  it. 
He  seemed  almost  a  lad  again.  So  far  as  liquor 
was  concerned,  he  was  sober,  yet  he  kissed  Edith 
almost  boisterously. 

"  I've  put  it  over!  "  he  cried.     "  I've  put  it  over 


250  JIM 

at  last !  If  we  only  manage  this  new  deal  right,  the 
hard  times  are  ended." 

Edith  was  all  questions. 

"  You  remember  that  fellow  Bob  Tyrrell  you 
saw  that  time — well,  that  time  you  were  at  the  of 
fice,"  Charley  explained.  "  He's  our  meat." 

Edith  remembered. 

"  What'd  you  think  of  him?  " 

"  I  didn't  think  much  about  him.  He  was  too 
busy  with  the  stenographer,  and,  besides,  he  looked 
a  little  like— like  Jim." 

Charley's  face  clouded. 

"  Oh,  don't  talk  about  Jim  now,"  he  said;  but  he 
brightened  immediately.  "  We've  got  a  success 
that'll  make  Jim  green  with  envy.  And,  anyway, 
Tyrrell's  not  really  like  him — same  height  and  man 
ners,  maybe — that'll  all.  A  little  stuck-up,  like  Jim, 
but  that's  just  how  I  could  work  him:  I'd  learned 
the  sort.  This  man's  eyes  are  gray  and  his  nose  is 
like  one  of  those  statues  of  an  old  Roman  politician." 

"  Who  is  he,  and  what's  he  going  to  do  for  us?  " 

It  seemed  that  Tyrrell  was  going  to  do  the  thing 
they  wanted  of  anybody  that  would  do  it:  he  was 
going  to  provide  the  money  needed  to  float  the  in 
vention.  Personally,  Charley  knew  nothing  of  this 
patron  beyond  that  he  had  once  been  brought  to 
Vanaman's  club  before  Charley  was  forced  to  resign 
from  it,  had  met  the  inventor  there,  and,  being 
told  of  the  sounder,  as  every  chance  acquaintance 
was,  became  more  and  more  interested  until  he  was 
now  tacitly  promising  his  support. 

Edith  had  gone  to  the  window  and  was  looking 
out. 


JIM  251 

"Are  you  sure  he  really  has  the  money?"  she 
asked. 

"  Trust  me  for  that.  I  had  Bradstreets  look  him 
up.  I  told  you  he  was  a  rich  young  Boston  fellow. 
He  inherited  no  end  of  cash,  and  he's  thinking  of 
settling  here  in  New  York.  That  was  enough  for 
me.  I've  talked  him  'round,  and  all  you've  got  to 
do  is  to  be  nice  to  him." 

"  /  have  ?  "  Edith  did  not  turn.  "  What  do  you 
mean?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  mean  we're  going  to  have  him  to  dinner  to 
night" 

She  turned  now,  and  her  face  showed  sudden  dis 
may. 

"  We  can't  have  him  here,"  she  declared. 

"  Just  a  moment,  please.  Certainly,  we  won't 
have  him  here.  Oh,  just  trust  me  to  do  the  right 
thing,  my  dear.  We're  going  to  dine  at  the 
Martinique."  Charley  chuckled.  "  Where's  the 
liquor?"  he  asked.  "  I'm  so  worked  up  over  this 
good  luck  I  can  hardly  think." 

"The  Martinique?  "  Edith's  voice  was  sharp  as 
she  repeated  the  name  of  the  hotel  at  which  she 
had  dined  with  Tyrrell.  She  added,  quickly:  "You 
know  we  can't  afford  that." 

"  Can't  we,  though?  "  Her  husband  drew  from 
a  trousers-pocket  two  bills,  one  for  a  hundred  dol 
lars  and  the  other  for  fifty.  "  I  guess  those  will  a 
little  more  than  pay  the  order." 

"  Charley!  "  She  put  out  her  hands  for  the 
money.  "  How  did  you  get  it?  " 

He  did  not  surrender  the  bills;  but  he  answered: 

"  By  being  a  good  little  boy.     I  ran  up  to  see 


252  JIM 

father  as  soon  as  I'd  hooked  Tyrrell.  Poppa's  not  so 
well;  Mame's  rather  worried  about  him — needlessly, 
I  think,  for  he's  been  this  way  so  often — but  I  told 
her  where  she  could  get  me  by  'phone  any  time  to 
day  or  to-night,  and  of  course  to-morrow  first  thing 
I'll  run  up  there." 

"  But  the  money?" 

"  Oh,  yes !  Well,  I  told  poppa  I'd  interested  an 
expert — Tyrrell  is  an  expert  in  a  way:  an  expert 
investor,  anyhow,  and  perfectly  clear-headed — and 
the  old  man  coughed  up  this  much  toward  cinching 
him.  Then,  if  I  do  cinch  him,  poppa'll  come  along 
in  on  the  deal.  We  won't  really  need  his  money, 
then,  but  I  guess  we  can  use  all  we  get." 

Edith  was  suspicious.  "  You  got  all  this  by  only 
saying  that?  " 

"  Not  exactly."  He  put  his  arm  around  her  waist. 
"  He  asked  about  you,  and  I  had  to — had  to  say 
we  hadn't  been  seeing  much  of  each  other  lately. 
Honestly,  he  can't  stand  any  shock,  you  know,  and 
you  told  me  long  ago  to  jolly  him." 

Edith's  mind  reverted  to  the  dinner. 

"  Don't  let's  go  to  the  Martinique,"  she  said. 
"  Let's  go  somewhere  else.  Why  do  you  want  to 
go  there?" 

"Why  don't  you  want  to?" 

"  I  don't  know.     It's—         I  just  don't  want  to." 

"  Well,  it's  too  late  to  change  now.  I've  reserved 
a  table  and  ordered  the  dinner.  They  say  there's 
a  good  cabaret  there." 

"  I  haven't  any  clothes  fit  for  the  Martinique," 
said  Edith. 

"  That     don't    matter,"     Charley    assured    her. 


JIM  253 

"  Wherever  we  went,  it  would  have  to  be  some  place 
as  good  as  the  Martinique.  I  thought  you'd  some 
pretty  swell  things  left.  Here,  take  twenty  out  of 
this  fifty  and  buy  a  dress." 

"Get  a  dinner-gown  in  an  afternoon?  And  for 
only  twenty  dollars?  Charley,  you  must  be  crazy!  " 

It  was  a  dash  of  cold  water  on  the  warm  surface 
of  his  triumph.  He  rather  steamed  at  her,  but  he 
agreed  at  last  to  give  her  fifty  dollars,  and  Edith 
bought  a  ready-made  gown  for  thirty. 

§  3.  Her  dress  was  of  a  soft  ninon,  simply  made, 
white.  Only  the  slightest  immediate  alteration  had 
been  needed.  It  was  modestly  cut,  but  showed  her 
dazzling  neck  and  shoulders  and  gave  every  advan 
tage  to  her  tall  figure  and  the  brunette  beauty  of  her 
face.  Her  cheeks  wanted  but  little  rouge  to-night 
and  her  brows  and  lashes  only  the  lightest  touch 
of  crayon.  Her  brown  eyes  shone  with  the  radiance 
of  stars  in  a  clear  sky  after  storm;  her  only  orna 
ment  was  her  wedding-ring. 

Most  clothes  a  man  may  wear  and  give  no  hint 
of  whether  he  has  been  brought  up  to  wear  their  like; 
but  not  evening-clothes :  for  good  or  ill,  they  betray 
him.  Charley,  in  his,  looked  puffed  and  conscious; 
slim  Tyrrell  wore  his  as  only  he  wears  them  who 
has  worn  them  every  evening  since  his  boyhood. 
That  was  one  of  his  few  points  of  resemblance  to 
Jim.  Again,  as  she  looked  at  him,  Edith  fell  to 
wondering  why,  at  their  first  meeting,  he  had  re 
called  her  former  husband. 

Of  Tyrrell  she  was  wholly  confident:  he  would 
not  show  that  they  two  had  a  secret.  Upon  Char- 


254  JIM 

ley  she  scarcely  dared  count:  she  had  warned  him 
that  a  heavy  drinker  would  not  impress  a  prospective 
inventor. 

"  I  tell  you  he's  as  good  as  hooked,"  said  Charley. 

"  He's  not  on  the  kitchen-stove  yet,"  she  answered. 

Now  here  was  her  husband  trying  to  satisfy  his 
own  thirst  under  a  pretense  of  hospitality.  While 
Tyrrell  drank  his  cocktail  slowly,  Charley  had  bolted 
his;  he  tapped  anxiously  on  the  table  with  his  fin 
gers  until  his  guest  had  finished  and  then  instantly 
commanded — it  could  not  truthfully  be  called  an 
invitation : 

"Have  another!" 

Edith  was  afraid  that  Tyrrell  might  accede.  He 
did  not  look  at  her;  he  looked  about  the  wainscoted 
room  in  which  he  had  dined  with  her. 

"  No,  thank  you,"  he  said. 

"  One's  no  good,"  urged  Charley. 

"  Two  are  worse — for  me,"  said  Tyrrell.  He 
smiled.  "  I  never  take  more  than  one." 

She  knew  this  was  not  correct,  and  she  silently 
thanked  him  for  the  lie. 

The  lack  of  that  second  cocktail  made  Charley 
nervous.  He  had  ordered  a  dinner  that  she  knew 
to  be  too  elaborate,  one  garishly  unlike  the  dinner 
Tyrrell  had  ordered  for  her  here,  and  he  was  over 
bearing  with  the  waiters.  He  tried  to  make  up  with 
the  wine  for  the  loss  of  the  liquor;  he  knew  that 
Edith  felt  she  must  watch  him,  and  this  intensified 
his  nervousness. 

Just  as  the  clams  were  gone  and  the  soup  was 
served,  there  came  a  fanfare  from  the  orchestra,  and 
the  cabaret-performance  began.  It  began  with  one 


JIM  255 

of  the  singers  that  Edith  and  Tyrrell  had  heard  to 
gether.  Much  of  the  following  programme  was  the 
same;  but  to  the  woman's  eyes  and  ears  it  seemed 
somehow  coarsened.  Charley  was  eating  heavily; 
his  guest  ate  little,  drank  less,  and  made  polite  small- 
talk.  When  the  crowd  of  diners  applauded,  Char 
ley  joined  loudly  in  the  applause,  but  when  two  of 
the  performers  danced  the  tango  he  scowled  into 
his  plate. 

"  I  think  these  new  dances  are  rank,"  he  said. 

Nobody  replied. 

"  They're  rank,"  repeated  Charley. 

The  Bostonian's  eyes  did  not  seek  Edith's,  but 
a  reply  of  sorts  had  been  demanded. 

"  Wouldn't  you  rather  say,"  he  asked,  "  that  it 
depends  on  the  people  that  dance  them?" 

"  That's  what  /  think,"  Edith  ventured. 

'  They  ought  to  be  stopped,"  said  Charley. 

"  The  best  people "  his  wife  began. 

"  So  much  the  worse  for  them.  I've  been  hearing 
a  lot  about  these  tango-teas  lately — places  where 
divorces  are  made." 

It  was  the  unfortunate  word.  Edith  colored. 
Charley  colored,  and  his  annoyed  nervousness  in 
creased.  It  grew  painful  not  only  to  himself,  but 
to  his  wife  and  his  guest.  When,  presently,  it  drove 
him  to  rise  and  say,  "  Excuse  me  a  minute,"  Edith, 
although  she  knew  he  was  going  to  the  bar  for 
whisky,  was  almost  glad  to  have  him  go:  at  least, 
momentarily,  it  would  quiet  him.  All  the  while 
that  he  was  gone  Tyrrell  continued  to  make  small- 
talk  as  before,  in  the  manner  of  a  man  that  had  met 
her  for  the  first  time  that  evening. 


256  JIM 

The  dinner  ran  through  course  after  course.  On 
the  whole,  they  did  not  dine  badly,  and  there  was 
plenty  of  champagne.  Edith  drank  sparingly,  be 
cause  she  saw  that  Tyrrell  did  not  show  the  effects 
of  what  little  he  drank  and  because  Charley  was  so 
plainly  drinking  at  random.  By  conversational  di 
versions  that  she  was  sure  Tyrrell  observed,  but  that 
he  pretended  not  to  observe,  she  kept  her  husband 
from  too  heavy  insistence  upon  his  invention,  and 
not  until  the  coffee  and  brandy  were  served  did  she 
permit  him  to  raise  his  glass  to  it. 

"  Well,"  said  Charley  at  last,  "  here's  to  the 
sounder!  " 

Tyrrell  bowed  approval. 

"  To  your  good  fortune !  "  said  he. 

It  was  a  waiter  who  interfered.  He  said  Charley 
was  wanted  at  the  telephone,  and  when  Charley 
returned  it  was  with  news  that  postponed  the  toast 
indefinitely.  His  face  was  tense  and  his  voice  shook. 
Edith  had  feared  that  he  would  come  back  drunk: 
he  had  come  back  shockingly  sobered. 

"  It's  from  Mame,"  he  began.  He  did  not  sit 
down.  "  My  sister,  I  mean,"  he  explained  to  Tyr 
rell.  "  There's  been  another  sinking-spell.  Morley's 
been  sent  for,  and  he  says  the  end  may  be — mayn't 
be  here  yet,  but  that  I'd  better  come  at  once." 

Edith's  fear  of  death  sent  her  pale.  "  I'm  so 
sorry,"  she  whispered.  Then  she  realized  that  all 
this  was  unintelligible  to  their  guest.  "  My  hus 
band's  father  has  been  ill  for  a  long  while,"  she 
said. 

Tyrrell  rose  at  once,  regret  on  his  lips  and  in  his 
eyes: 


JIM  257 

"  You  must  go,  of  course." 

Charley  nodded  solemnly  and,  the  bill  paid,  they 
hurried  to  the  line  of  waiting  motors  before  the 
door.  Vanaman  started  to  give  the  Lexington 
Avenue  address  to  the  chauffeur. 

"But  I'm  not  going  with  you,  am  I?"  asked 
Edith.  She  did  not  want  to  seem  heartless,  but  she 
dreaded  a  house  into  which  death  was  soon  to  enter, 
and  she  knew  that  at  the  Vanamans'  she  would  be 
both  useless  and  unacknowledged. 

Her  husband  understood. 

"That's  true,"  he  said.  "My  wife,"  he  ex 
plained  to  Tyrrell,  "  won't  go  with  me.  There  are 
circumstances " 

He  hesitated  painfully,  and  Edith  found  time  to 
blush  for  his  awkwardness,  but  Tyrrell  saved  the 
situation. 

"  If  I  may  see  Mrs.  Vanaman  to  your  home," 
he  suggested,  "  I  shall  be  glad.  I  want  to  be  of 
any  help  possible." 

Charley's  protruding  eyes  amazingly  gleamed 
with  a  jealous  refusal.  Tyrrell  must  have  noticed  it. 
Edith  spoke  quickly. 

"  That's  very  kind  of  you,  Mr.  Tyrrell,"  she  said. 
Death  was  here,  the  presence  that  she  most  dreaded. 
It  had  sent  its  cold  breath  into  that  hot  room  of 
revelers,  among  the  gorged  and  the  drunken,  be 
tween  the  comic  songs  and  the  voluptuous  dances — 
such  dances  as  she  had  danced  with  Tyrrell.  There 
had  been  a  time,  not  long  since,  when  she  could 
not  have  wished  death  even  for  Jim;  and  there  had 
followed  a  time,  there  had  followed  many  times, 
when  she  wished  it  for  old  Vanaman.  Well,  he  was 


258  JIM 

going  to  die  now,  old  Vanaman,  the  man  that  had 
so  long  stood  between  her  and  security,  the  man  that 
refused  her,  the  man  whose  death  could  alone,  un 
less  the  invention  succeeded,  ease  the  curse  that  had 
begun  its  sway  with  her  divorce.  That  wish  of  hers 
was  to  be  granted,  and,  in  the  horror  of  having  this 
thing  which  she  had  wanted,  she  could  have  screamed 
aloud.  At  that  moment  she  would  have  given  any 
thing  short  of  her  own  life  to  return  the  gift  of 
his.  .  .  .  "Thank  you,"  she  was  saying;  "  I  am  a 
little — nervous.  Get  in.  Charley,  I'll  wait  up  for 
you,  of  course — and  you  can  telephone." 

§  4.  She  had  simply  wanted  not  to  be  alone  with 
it:  the  realization  that  old  Vanaman  was  dying.  But, 
as  the  taxi  whirled  her  and  Tyrrell  up  the  street, 
she  was  the  prey  of  a  mob  of  emotions.  She  was 
overtried  by  her  long,  silent  hatred  of  the  husband 
she  had  divorced  and  by  his  constant  presence  in  her 
mind;  she  was  nervously  ill  from  the  poverty  of  her 
present  life,  the  strain  of  Charley's  business-diffi 
culties,  and  the  fallacy  of  her  position  toward  Char 
ley's  father.  The  growth  of  concealment  and  lies, 
her  little  gleam  of  joy  hidden  under  a  cloak  of  de 
ception;  the  increase  of  failure,  the  advance  of  dis 
aster;  the  loss  of  reputation,  the  loss  of  friends, 
the  loss  of  love:  they  had  broken  her  at  last.  The 
stimulants  that  had  perforce  become  her  habitual  aid 
were  slowly  growing  to  be  her  daily  enemies;  envy 
gnawed  at  her  soul  and  sickened  her  heart.  It  was 
all  bad  enough,  it  was  increasingly  bad,  that  Char 
ley  should  risk  Tyrrell's  financial  support  by  play 
ing  the  boor  at  dinner;  it  was  worse  that  next,  with 


JIM  259 

the  horror  of  death  upon  them,  he  must  first  clumsily 
hint  to  his  guest  of  the  dying  man's  dislike  for  her 
and  then  further  endanger  his  cause  with  the  Bos- 
tonian  by  a  flash  of  utterly  unexpected  jealousy;  but 
worst  of  all  were  these  certainties  and  salvations 
that  had  come  like  twin  lightning-strokes  to  end  the 
months  of  doubts  and  despairing.  She  had  been 
in  no  mood  fit  to  meet  adequately  the  last  moments 
of  crisis:  the  hope  offered  that  noon,  the  dreadful 
tidings  of  that  night.  The  first  relief  had  been  too 
sudden  and  unexpected,  the  second  was  too  terrible 
to  be  borne.  Abruptly,  she  burst  into  uncontrollable 
tears. 

Tyrrell  tried  to  respect  her  feelings  by  Ignoring 
them;  but  Edith's  sobs  were  never  of  a  sort  to  brook 
ignoring. 

"  I'm  very,  very  sorry,"  he  said  at  last.  "  It's 
dreadful  news." 

Because  she  was  lonely  and  afraid,  she  put  her 
hand  on  his.  The  action  was  as  simple  and  spon 
taneous  as  that  of  a  child  appealing  to  its  nearest 
protector.  Instantly,  the  contact  burst  the  last  bar 
rier  of  her  so-tried  reserve. 

"  Oh,"  she  said,  "  it  isn't  only  that.  It's  every 
thing—everything!  We're  dreadfully  poor,  and  his 
people  don't  like  me,  and  I'm  lonely;  and  now,  with 
this— this  thing  about  his  father — I'm  afraid — I'm 
just  dreadfully  afraid!" 

Never  before  had  she  told  him  anything  of  her 
real  self  or  her  real  life.  Now,  before  they  had 
reached  Greenwich  Village,  she  told  him  enough 
of  her  story  for  him  to  guess  almost  all  the 
rest.  Her  "divorce  she  did  not  mention,  but  there 


260  JIM 

remained  in  her  narrative  enough  to  interest  and 
move  him. 

He  was  a  man  of  the  world  and  therefore  a  sen 
timentalist  He  felt  for  her;  he  pitied  her.  In  all 
friendliness  he  offered  to  stay  awhile  in  her  rooms 
with  her,  and  there  he  tried  to  quiet  her  by  diverting 
their  talk  to  other  matters. 

"  But  things  will  be  all  right  now,"  he  said. 

"  Now?  That's  just  the  dreadful  worst  of  it — 
that  it  must  all  come  out  of — out  of  his  father's 
death." 

Tyrrell  had  sat  on  the  couch  in  the  poor  room, 
apparently  noting  only  such  of  her  poverty  as  she 
chose  to  point  out  to  him.  His  gray  eyes  were  grave, 
his  lips  tender. 

"  But  it  won't,"  he  explained:  "  it  will  come  out 
of  the  success  of  his  invention." 

She  turned  her  tear-stained  face  to  him : 

"  You'll  think  I'm  ungrateful  not  to  have  thanked 
you  before  for  that;  but  I  do  thank  you:  I  do.  If 
it  wasn't  for  you " 

"  Please !  "  He  raised  his  hand.  "  Don't  talk  of 
that." 

There  were  whisky  and  water  on  the  table,  and 
he  poured  her  some  to  steady  her  and,  since  she 
would  take  none  without  him,  took  a  little  him 
self. 

"  It  will  soon  be  all  right,"  he  told  her. 

She  shook  her  head: 

"  Oh,  you  must  see  how  it  can't  be !  " 

Tyrrell  chose  to  see  nothing. 

"  Your  husband's  father  may  pull  through,"  he 
said.  "  These  long  illnesses  often  have  scares  of 


JIM  261 

this  sort  without  any  quick  fatality.  He  may  even 
get  well.  It's  almost  sure  that  he  won't  die  to 
night." 

"  He  will,"  she  persisted.    "  He  will.    I  know  it." 

But  Tyrrell  kept  it  up,  and,  slowly,  he  made  her 
see  things  much  as  he  saw  them.  By  the  time  that 
he  thought  it  safe  to  leave  her,  she  was  recovering 
something  of  her  accustomed  appearance  of  serenity, 
and  looked  again  the  beautiful  woman  that  she  gen 
erally  was.  To  her  he  seemed  a  courteous  man, 
wise,  a  strong  and  handsome  comforter  sent  from 
the  social  sphere  to  which  she  could  now  again  hope 
one  day  to  attain. 

"  Good-night,"  he  smiled  as  she  gave  him  her 
hand.  "  I  hope  you  will  be  all  right  now." 

"  Good-night,"  she  answered.  "  You've  been 
awfully  good  to  me." 

The  hands  were  held  for  that  mere  moment  longer 
than  is  common,  which  makes  it  so  hard  to  release 
them  and  impossible  to  retain  them.  Her  brown 
eyes  were  bright  with  fresh  tears,  tears  of  gratitude 
now  and  tears  unshed.  Tyrrell's  face  was  gravely 
tender. 

"  I've  done  nothing,  Mrs.  Vanaman,"  he  was  say 
ing;  and  then  again,  "  Good-night." 

She  heard  him  go  down  the  stairs,  and  she  heard 
the  street-door  close  behind  him.  She  looked  from 
the  window  at  his  lithe  figure. 

If  only  Charley's  father  got  well,  it  would  be  all 
right  to  hope  again.  Even  if  Charley  did  not  change 
with  success,  there  would  still  remain  much  that  she 
might  have  of  what  was  worth  while.  She  would 
be  done  with  failure.  .  .  . 


262  JIM 

§  5.  And  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later  it  was  her 
heavy  husband  with  a  puffed  and  brutalized  face  who 
was  standing  where  Tyrrell  had  said  good-night 
to  her.  Charley  had  no  sooner  entered  than  he  saw 
the  two  empty  whisky  glasses,  and  wrung  from  her 
the  admission  that  Tyrrell  had  been  in  the  room. 

"  So  that's  what  you  do  as  soon  as  I'm  called 
away  to  my  sick  father!  "  he  blustered. 

She  was  innocent,  and  she  was  angry  at  his  injus 
tice.  Her  cheeks  flamed  and  her  delicate  hands 
were  clenched  at  her  sides. 

"  You  forget  that  you  told  me  to  be  nice  to  him." 

"Nice!  That's  one  thing;  but  this "  From 

a  hand  that  shook  with  anger,  his  thick  forefinger 
indicated  the  empty  glasses  on  the  table. 

"How  dare  you  suspect  me?"  she  demanded. 

Charley  chuckled  bitterly.  "  How  did  you  dare 
to  suspect  me?"  he  asked. 

They  faced  each  other,  their  eyes  like  drawn 
poniards.  Each  one  knew  the  answer  to  those  ques 
tions:  they  suspected  each  other  because  they  had 
once  deserved  the  suspicion  of  Jim. 

"  Don't  say  it!  "  cried  Edith.  "  Don't  you  dare 
to  say  it !  " 

Charley's  lip  curled  upward,  but  his  glance  fell. 
Into  Tyrrell's  glass,  he  poured  himself  some  liquor 
and  drank  it  eagerly.  He  was  almost  glad  to  be 
the  bearer  of  bad  news. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  while  you  were  flirting  with 
that  man,  poppa  died.  I  'phoned  Zoller  and  got  him 
out  of  bed  and  asked  him  about  the  will.  The  will 
leaves  everything  to  Mame  if  I'm  ever  married  to 
you." 


FIFTEENTH  CHAPTER 

"T^VEAD?     He's  dead?" 

J  Oh,  she  had  known  that  this  news  would 
be  brought  her.  Tyrrell  had  lulled  her 
into  temporary  hope,  but  Charley's  entrance  ended 
that.  She  saw  the  thing  in  his  first  glance.  She  felt 
it  lurking  behind  his  cross-examination  about  her 
recent  visitor,  stealing  nearer  and  nearer  through 
her  husband's  denunciation  of  the  visit.  That  cross- 
examination,  those  denunciations,  had  been  hard  to 
bear,  but  this  was  worse.  It  was  all  the  worse  be 
cause  of  its  slow  approach:  all  the  worse  because 
she  had  expected  it. 

"  Yes,  dead,"  said  Charley. 

He  dashed  into  the  next  room.  He  slammed  the 
door  behind  him,  but  she  heard  him  crying  there. 

Edith  could  not  cry.  She  saw  perfectly  how  her 
husband  could  combine  sincere  grief  for  his  father's 
death  with  sharp  chagrin  at  his  father's  will;  but 
she,  for  a  half  hour,  sat  with  bowed  head,  clenched 
hands,  dry  eyes. 

Then  she  got  up.  Hideous  as  was  to  her  the  sense 
that  she  had  wished  this  death,  she  felt  at  last  that 
she  must  meet  practically  its  practical  results  to 
her. 

She  went  into  the  next  room.  Charley,  lying  on 
the  bed,  raised  a  tearful  face.  She,  standing  in  the 
doorway,  said: 

"  You've  got  to  break  the  will." 
263 


264  JIM 

"  I've  thought  of  that."  Swayed  by  her  resolu 
tion,  he  would  not  evade  the  issue.  "  And  it  can't 
be  done." 

"  It  must  be." 

"  It  can't  be.  I  should  think  you'd  had  enough 
of  law." 

"  It  doesn't  matter  what  I've  had.  I've  been 
dragged  into  it  so  often  that  once  or  twice  more 
can't  count." 

"  But,  Edith,  I  tell  you  it's  no  use.  Zoller  drew 
it,  and  he's  the  safest  thing  alive." 

"  You  can  prove  that  Mame  got  your  father  un 
der  her  thumb.  You  can  prove  he  wasn't  in  his 
right  mind.  Look  how  long  he'd  been  sick." 

"That's  just  what  I  can't  prove.  Zoller  knows; 
so  does  Mame.  The  servants  know.  So  do  poppa's 
friends:  he  was  seeing  them  every  few  days  at  the 
time  he  made  that  will.  We  wouldn't  have  a  leg 
to  stand  on." 

He  proceeded  to  explain;  he  showed  her  that  her 
plan  was  unquestionably  foredoomed. 

She  had  sinned,  then,  and  suffered  for  it,  and  was 
not  to  gather  the  fruits  of  her  sin.  Hysteria  seized 
her.  She  said  things  that,  a  few  minutes  since,  she 
would  not  have  dared  even  to  think. 

"It's  too  much;  it's  too  much.  His  own  son! 
The  old  fool !  The  old  sneak !  He  was  under 
Mame's  thumb — Mame's  and  that  foxy  lawyer's! 
They  were  in  this  together;  they  worked  him  what 
ever  way  they  pleased:  Mame  with  her  sniveling 
religion — I  never  did  trust  her — and  Zoller,  the 
shyster.  They  did  him  brown.  And  they  made  a 
dunce  of  you,  all  right.  His  own  son!  It  was  all 


JIM  265 

because  he  hated  me;  it  was  all  because  Jim  started 
that  cross-suit.  Well,  if  your  father  hated  me,  I 
know  what  he  was:  he  was " 

Charley  leaped  from  the  bed. 

"Stop  that!  "  he  cried. 

"  I  won't.  I'll  say  what  I  like  for  once.  You 
know  what  he  was  as  well  as  I  do,  but  you're  afraid 
of  the  truth :  you  always  were.  You !  Why,  it  was 
all  your  fault.  You've  been  a  perfect  dub  about  it 
right  along.  Anybody  with  any  sense  could  have 
stopped  him;  but  you  couldn't.  Look  what  Jim's 
done  for  himself]  at  his  worst,  he  was  a  better 
business-man  than  you  are.  You  can't  make  any 
money  and  you  can't  hold  on  to  what  you  were  born 
to."  She  flung  herself  on  the  bed  from  which  he 
had  risen.  "  Oh,  I  don't  mean  it;  I  don't  mean  it! 
I  don't  know  what  I'm  saying.  It's  too  much;  it's 
too  much !  " 

The  tears  he  could  never  resist  won  him  now. 
He  went  to  her  and  began  to  stroke  her  hair. 

"  I  know,"  he  said.  "  I  understand,  dear.  Don't 
you  worry.  It's  all  right.  We  can  hold  out  a  little 
longer.  We  can  move  up  there  till  Tyrrell  comes 
in  with  me.  He's  got  some  stock  he  wants  to  get 
rid  of  in  a  good  market  and  then  put  that  money 
in  the  sounder.  It'll  be  all  right:  you'll  see." 

§2.  She  had  to  do  it:  now  that  old  Vanaman 
was  dead,  she  had  to  live  in  the  house  from  which 
he  had  barred  her.  In  spite  of  her  once  expressed 
determination  not  to  live  with  any  relative  of  her 
husband,  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  done  but  to 
take  shelter  with  myopic  Mame  in  the  house  on  Lex- 


266  JIM 

ington  Avenue.  Edith  reminded  Charley  that  Jim, 
with  all  his  faults,  had  taken  better  care  of  her,  but 
she  bowed,  however  ungraciously,  to  the  inevitable. 

The  seriousness  of  their  position  temporarily  so 
bered  both  husband  and  wife.  The  next  day  Char 
ley  spoke  to  Mame  about  it. 

"  Do  you  think  you  can  put  us  up  here  for  a 
while?"  he  asked.  "You  ought  to  do  that  much 
for  me,  Mame.  Besides,  you'll  be  lonely,  now,  and 
Edith'll  be  company  for  you." 

They  were  sitting  in  the  darkened  parlor,  Edith 
with  them.  At  the  last  moment  she  had  summoned 
all  her  resolution  and  come  along  with  Charley. 
Old  Vanaman's  body  had  not  yet  been  brought 
downstairs;  it  remained  in  the  big  mahogany  bed 
above.  Their  voices  were  monotonous  and  low. 
Mame  sprawled  limply  in  a  chair;  her  spectacles 
were  in  her  lap;  she  dabbed  her  eyes  with  a  hand 
kerchief.  Edith  leaned  back  on  the  sofa;  Charley 
sat  erect,  his  hands  outspread  on  his  knees. 

"  I  want  you  to  understand,  Charley,  that  it 
wasn't  my  doing,  that  will  wasn't,"  said  Mame.  "  I 
hadn't  the  least  idea." 

"  I  know." 

"  But  I  got  to  follow  it;  I  got  to  do  what  poor 
poppa  wanted  I  should,  and  in  it  he  says  I  got  to 
keep  what  he  leaves  me.  Mr.  Zoller  particularly 
explained  that  to  me  this  very  morning — most  par 
ticularly,  he  did." 

Charley  wriggled.  He  had  hoped  for  a  substan 
tial  gift.  He  looked  at  Edith,  but  Edith  looked 
away. 

"  Still,"  Charley  suggested,  "  you've  got  to  invest 


JIM  267 

it."  He  saw  another  light.  "  You  do  have  to  do 
that,  don't  you?" 

"  It's  all  invested,"  said  Mame.  "  You  know  how 
poppa  was." 

Again  Charley  tried  to  catch  his  wife's  glance,  but 
her  face  was  like  the  statue  of  a  classic  goddess. 

'  You'd  change  your  investments  if  you  could  get 
better  ones,  wouldn't  you?" 

Mame  met  him  with  stolid  gentleness: 

"  Poppa  last  week  made  me  promise  I  wouldn't 
invest  one  cent  of  whatever  he'd  leave  me  in  the 
sounder." 

Her  brother  had  not  meant  that  she  should  see, 
before  he  brought  her  to  it,  what  he  was  leading 
her  to.  He  frowned. 

"  Even  so "  he  began. 

"  Not,"  Mame  concluded,  "  till  a  regular  tele 
graph  company  endorsed  it." 

"  Oh !  "—This  was  better.—"  But  I've  got  a  man 
to  endorse  it  who's  as  much  an  expert  as  any  tele 
graph  company.  His  name's  Tyrrell.  I  told  poppa 
about  him  yesterday  and  poppa  told  me— 

"  He  told  me"  said  Mame  in  the  same  sad  mono 
tone,  "  I  mustn't  invest  one  cent  of  what  he'd  leave 
me  in  the  sounder  till  a  regular  telegraph  company 
endorsed  it." 

Charley  looked  helplessly  at  Edith  and  received  no 
help. 

"  Well,  then,"  he  said,  "  about  our  living  here?  " 

There  Mame  was  acquiescent.  She  would  be  glad 
to  have  them. 

"  I'll  do  the  housework,"  she  added — "  what  the 
servants  don't  do  of  it.  I'll  need  something  to  keep 


268  JIM 

me  busy,  now  I  can't  be  busy  with — with  what  I  have 
been  busy  with  so  long."  The  handkerchief,  twisted 
into  a  ball,  went  to  her  eyes.  "  I  want  to  do  my  duty 
by  everybody.  I'm  sure  I'll  only  be  too  glad  to  do 
whatever  I  can  for  my  own  brother." 

The  omission  of  any  wish  to  do  what  could  be 
done  for  Edith  was  innocent.  If  Edith  noticed  it, 
she  gave  no  sign  of  noticing.  She  spoke  now  for 
almost  the  first  time  during  this  interview. 

"  You're  awfully  kind,"  she  said.  Her  tone  was 
cool  and  even,  her  face  expressionless.  "  Of  course 
you're  going  to  have  a  trustee  and  of  course  you'll 
have  Charley — doing  for  him  what  you  can,  you 
know.  It  will  be  so  convenient  to  have  your  trustee 
right  in  the  same  house  with  you." 

Charley  turned  sharply  to  her.  Mame  listened 
with  open  mouth. 

"  Well,"  she  slowly  began,  "  Mr.  Zoller  said " 

"  Of  course  he  did;  but  you  wouldn't  agree  with 
him,  would  you?  After  all,  Charley  is  your  brother, 

and,  as  you  say,  you'll  be  only  too  glad I  can 

telephone  my  own  lawyer  (that's  Mr.  Leishman,  and 
he's  one  of  the  best  in  New  York)  to  send  up  the 
necessary  application  blanks  and  a  power-of-attorney, 
too." 

Mame  was  engulfed  before  she  realized  what  all 
this  was  about.  It  was  after  Edith  had  telephoned, 
and  while  they  were  waiting  for  the  arrival  of  the 
papers,  that  Mame  said  to  her  sister-in-law: 

"Wouldn't  you  like  to  come  and  see  poppa?  " 

Edith  drew  back.    Her  self-possession  vanished. 

"  No — oh,  no,  thank  you  !  " 

"  You   wouldn't  believe   how   calm   and   peaceful 


JIM  269 

he  seems,"  said  Mame.  "  It's  lovely.  He  looks  so 
natural." 

"  I  wouldn't,"  stammered  Edith.  "  I  mean  I 
couldn't.  I've  never— 

They  resumed  their  waiting  for  the  emissary  of 
the  re-engaged  Leishman.  Mr.  Leishman  carried 
this  little  matter  through  for  Edith  to  its  finish. 

§  3.  Husband  and  wife  moved  into  the  old- 
fashioned  house  on  the  day  after  the  funeral.  It 
was  a  vast  improvement  on  their  lodgings  in  Green 
wich  Village,  but  Edith,  on  entering  it  to  live  there, 
felt  as  if  there  was  closing  on  her  something  worse 
than  the  door  of  a  prison. 

She  wore  black,  and  her  clothes  were  no  conven 
tional  deception.  Hourly,  for  many  weeks,  the 
thought  of  how  she  had  wished  old  Vanaman's 
death  was  made  more  poignant  by  the  house  that 
had  been  his  and  all  that  it  contained.  Sleepless 
nights  and  memory-filled  days  wore  her  down.  And 
there  could  be  no  immediate  escape,  no  afternoons 
or  evenings  of  relief:  the  latter  Charley  passed  at 
home,  the  former  offered  no  tango-teas  to  a  woman 
in  mourning. 

She  was  a  trial  to  Mame,  and  the  servants,  know 
ing  the  tenor  of  the  will,  openly  disliked  her. 
Though  Charley's  sister  did  not  complain,  Edith 
knew  the  nature  of  Mame's  feelings  and  did  not 
care.  She  wanted  to  rest:  she  took  every  chance 
of  escape  from  the  sort  of  labor  that  she  had  per 
formed  in  her  former  lodgings.  She  gave  no  help 
to  her  sister-in-law;  breakfasted  in  bed;  required 
much  waiting  on.  She  liked  dainty  food  and  asked 


270  JIM 

for  it:  she  increased  the  household  expenses.  To 
Mame's  gossip  of  the  church,  of  Mrs.  Hamilton, 
and  the  missionary  society,  Edith  had  to  listen,  but 
she  would  not  go  to  services,  and  this,  she  was  aware, 
incurred  Mame's  further  disapproval. 

In  the  intervals  of  settling,  without  giving  bond, 
his  father's  estate,  Charley  was  perpetually  remind 
ing  his  wife  that  they  were,  at  all  events,  bulwarked 
against  starvation;  but  then,  as  Edith  soon  observed, 
they  were  not  much  more  than  that.  Tyrrell,  whom 
hard  necessity  compelled  her  husband  to  forgive, 
came  to  the  house  often,  talked  politely,  and  left 
early.  At  his  office,  too,  Charley  seemed  to  see  the 
Bostonian,  not  so  often,  yet  frequently.  But  the 
market  was  in  the  hands  of  the  bears,  and  Tyrrell 
still  refused  to  invest  in  the  sounder  before  he  could 
first  profitably  dispose  of  certain  stocks  that  he 
wanted  to  sell. 

In  the  middle  of  one  of  her  sleepless  nights, 
Edith  turned  from  her  thoughts  about  the  elder 
Vanaman's  death  to  notice  that  Charley  was  lying 
awake  beside  her. 

"  Except  that  we  don't  have  to  pay  rent,"  she  said, 
abruptly,  "we're  not  a  bit  better  off  than  we  used 
to  be." 

Directness  belongs  to  darkness:  Charley  took  the 
speech  as  matter  of  course. 

"  We'll  be  all  right,"  he  said. 
'  That's  what  you  were  always  telling  me." 

"  Well,  it's  come  true,  partly,  hasn't  it?  " 

Edith  lay  still  for  some  minutes.    Then  she  said: 

"  I  wish  we  could  break  the  will." 

"  You  know  we  can't,"  said  Charley. 


JIM  271 

'  Then,  why  don't  you  get  Mame  to  put  some 
thing  into  the  sounder?" 

"Why  don't  I?  You  heard  me  try  once,  didn't 
you?  I  don't  know  what's  got  over  Mame  lately. 
She  didn't  use  to  be  like  this.  She's  not  a  bit  like 
herself  nowadays." 

There  was  another  pause,  a  longer  one.  They 
were  thinking  of  the  same  thing.  This  time  it  was 
Charley  who  spoke  first.  He  spoke  of  something 
that,  in  spite  of  his  surprise  when  it  occurred,  he 
had  never  yet  referred  to: 

"  Why  did  you  get  Mame  to  give  me  that  power- 
of-attorney?  " 

Edith  buried  her  head  in  the  pillow. 

"How  do  I  know?"  she  said.  "Let's  go  to 
sleep." 

§  4.  Charley  did  try  again  to  persuade  his  sister 
to  a  practical  interest  in  his  invention.  He  tried 
next  day.  When  he  came  downstairs  in  the  morn 
ing,  he  found  Mame,  in  an  apron  and  with  her  head 
tied  up  in  a  towel,  sweeping  the  parlor.  Servants 
were  permitted  to  sweep  the  rest  of  the  house,  but 
the  parlor  and  the  room  in  which  the  elder  Vana- 
man  had  died  were  sacred. 

"  No,"  said  Mame  in  reply  to  Charley's  persua 
sions.  "  It's  no  use.  Poppa  said 

"  But  you  don't  believe  in  your  own  brother?  " 

"Yes,  I  believe  in  you.  Of  course  I  do;  but 
poppa  made  me  promise — — " 

"  Just  a  moment,  Mame.  I've  been  going  over 
poppa's  papers,  as  you  know.  It's  my  duty  now 
since  he  made  you  his  only  executor  and  you  made 


272  JIM 

me  your  agent.  Well,  I  find  that  the  highest  inter 
est  you're  drawing  is  six  per  cent.  If  my  sounder 
could  get  a  start,  it's  bound  to  pay  seven  from  the 
jump,  and  there's  nothing  that  it  won't  pay  before 
it's  five  years  older." 

Mame's  eyes  were  vague. 

"About  my  being  executor,"  she  said:  "I  met 
Mr.  Zoller  in  the  street  the  other  day  and  he  told 
me  poppa'd  told  him  of  course  I'd  let  him  act  for 
me." 

Charley  reddened. 

"Why  do  you  tell  him  everything  you  know? 
He's  not  your  lawyer." 

"  He  was  poppa's." 

"  Did  you  tell  him  I  had  your  power-of- 
attorney?  " 

"  He  didn't  ask,  Charley." 

"  Then  don't  tell  him.     I  don't  trust  that  man." 

"  Oh,  Charley!"  Mame  nearly  dropped  her 
broom.  "  He  was  such  a  friend  of  poppa's." 

"  I  don't  care.  I  don't  trust  him.  Now,  about 
those  investments — 

"No,"  said  Mame;  "it's  no  use,  Charley.  I 
never  asked  you  to  pay  back  that  money  I  lent  you 
while  you  were  living  downtown,  and  I  never  will; 
but  I  got  to  keep — 

"  This  isn't  a  loan !  "  her  brother  protested :  "  I'm 
not  trying  to  get  money  away  from  you ;  I'm  trying 
to  give  you  some." 

But  Mame  only  shook  her  toweled  head  and  en 
folded  him  in  her  dull  stare. 

"  Poppa  made  me  promise  not  to  invest  a  cent 


JIM  273 

in  the  sounder  till  some  big  telegraph  company  ap 
proved  it,  and  I  got  to  keep  my  promise,  Charley." 

§  5.  Charley  came  away  from  this  in  a  hopeless 
mood.  Midsummer  was  here:  again  Capital  was 
taking  its  vacation;  the  great  men  and  heads  of 
corporations,  from  whom  a  mere  line  of  writing 
would  have  made  the  sounder's  fortune,  were  gone 
to  seashore  and  mountain;  Charley  had  become  a 
nuisance  in  their  offices,  a  joke  for  their  office-boys. 
The  prospectuses  and  elaborate  booklets  that  he 
had  worked  so  hard  to  write  and  exhausted  his  credit 
to  publish  now  brought  replies  from  none  save 
cranks  and  paupers;  one  by  one  his  chances  of  in 
teresting  even  private  individuals  of  merely  second 
ary  means  had  receded  out  of  sight,  until  only  the 
figure  of  Tyrrell  remained — and  Tyrrell  waited  for 
the  rise  of  a  market  that,  in  the  July  sun,  slept  peace 
fully.  Charley  knew  that  he  could  not  hold  out 
a  month  longer. 

As  he  walked  to  the  subway  station,  he  passed  a 
stationer's  shop  and  saw  that  one  of  its  windows 
was  full  of  the  reproductions  of  one  picture.  .  It 
was  a  picture  of  a  young  man  and  woman  dancing 
the  tango,  and  it  was  shown  in  every  shape  and 
size.  There  were  copies  and  prints  in  color,  framed 
photographs,  and  a  score  of  picture  postcards. 

"  It  just  shows  what  people  are  coming  to,"  he 
thought.  "  It  ought  to  be  stopped,  that  sort  of  thing 
ought." 

Then  his  eye  was  caught  by  a  placard  in  the  win 
dow.  It  read: 


274  JIM 

"GET  THE  HABIT!" 

Take  along  a  copy  of  the  most 
popular  picture  in  America:  James 
Trent's  "  Tango." 

"  Everybody's  Doin'  It " 

Charley's  eyes  bulged. 

"Well,  I'll  be  damned!  "he  said. 

Jim  was  still  making  money,  Jim  was  still  suc 
cessful!  He  was  catering  to  the  depraved  appetite 
of  the  effete,  and  the  effete  were  buying  what  he  had 
to  offer. 

Charley  went  to  the  nearest  saloon  and  had  a 
drink.  In  the  subway  train  he  saw  a  girl  going 
to  work  with  one  of  the  tango  postcards  in  her 
hand.  Downtown  he  passed  other  shop-windows  full 
of  the  things.  No  doubt  Jim  was  paid  a  royalty  on 
every  copy  printed.  And  here  was  he,  Charley  Vana- 
man,  the  inventor  of  something  really  useful,  going 
bankrupt. 

He  wouldn't  put  up  with  it.  He  stopped  twice 
more  for  whisky.  He  would  end  this  situation.  He 
would  make  a  fortune  that  would  dwarf  the  pen 
nies  piled  up  by  this  painter.  He  would  take  a  big 
chance.  He  would  take  it  now. 

Then  came  the  inspiration.  The  large  telegraph 
companies  had  continued  to  show  themselves  ob 
durate;  they  could  not  be  cajoled,  and  so  Charley 
planned  to  force  them :  he  would  stake  his  last  shred 
of  credit  on  the  hope  that  the  market  would  rise 
within  three  weeks;  he  would  form  a  company  to 
be  initially  financed  by  Tyrrell's  support;  he  would 
publish  broadcast  his  story  of  the  telegraph  corpo- 


JIM  275 

rations'  ignorant  and  incompetent  disregard  of  him, 
place  it  before  the  great  American  public,  invest 
his  final  chances  in  that  public's  hatred  of  combina 
tions  of  capital  and  devotion  to  fair-play.  He  would 
begin  at  once,  though  the  tide  of  indebtedness  rose 
above  his  head  and  though  the  only  thing  that  could 
save  him  from  drowning  would  be  the  life-raft  to  be 
launched  by  Tyrrell. 

By  four  o'clock  that  afternoon  he  had  performed 
miracles  in  the  way  of  stretching  credit.  He  stood 
committed  to  his  scheme.  Twenty-odd  days  would 
decide,  once  and  for  all,  in  favor  of  final  success 
or  ruin. 

§  6.  One  can  become  accustomed  even  to  horror. 
Edith  first  became  accustomed  to  the  thought  of  her 
father-in-law's  death  as  an  answer  to  her  own  de 
sires,  and  then  ceased  to  believe  in  it.  The  horror 
gone  left  her  to  boredom,  but  the  boredom  was 
scarcely  less  irksome.  She  began  to  feel  that  Mame 
disliked  her,  was  jealous  of  her,  did  not  want  her 
in  the  house:  Mame  never  spoke  sharply  and  never 
ceased  to  work  for  her;  but  Edith  became  none  the 
less  possessed  by  this  idea.  She  had  drunk  a  little 
to  quiet  what  she  took  to  be  her  conscience;  now, 
however  occasionally,  she  drank  a  little  to  ease  her 
weariness.  The  strain  had  told  on  her;  her  cheeks 
more  often  needed  rouge,  and  she  became  used  to 
her  crayon.  There  came  an  afternoon  when  she 
stole  out  of  the  house  and  stood  in  a  hotel  door 
way,  looking  at  the  tango-dancers. 

Some  relief  she  had  to  have.  It  was  as  she  said 
to  Charley:  except  that  they  were  free  of  rent,  they 


276  JIM 

were  no  better  off  than  they  had  been  in  Greenwich 
Village ;  and  the  very  exemption  from  rent  bore  with 
it  the  stigma  of  charity.  In  the  long  effect,  it  could 
count  but  little.  Edith  knew  enough  of  her  husband's 
business  to  know  that  his  indebtedness  must  soon 
overwhelm  him  unless  Tyrrell  came  to  the  rescue, 
and  Tyrrell,  encouraging  in  tone,  remained  slow 
in  action.  She  foresaw  that  the  old  strain  would 
begin  again,  had  indeed  begun,  was  daily  tighten 
ing,  and  she  was  too  tired  to  endure  it. 

She  could  read  it  in  Charley.  His  words  were 
stubbornly  hopeful,  but  his  bearing  was  that  of  a 
breaking  man.  His  step  was  slow  and  his  mouth 
lolling;  he  had  long  minutes  of  complete  absent- 
mindedness  when,  in  the  midst  of  a  conversation,  he 
fell  silent  and  sat  staring  at  vacancy,  from  which  he 
would  return  in  a  violent  temper.  His  customary 
chuckle  had  lost  its  old  mirth  and  its  old  conceit, 
was  become  a  purely  muscular  habit.  He  was  more 
than  ever  jealous  of  her  past  with  Jim.  When  he 
walked  in  the  street  with  her,  he  would,  on  one 
flimsy  pretext  or  another,  excuse  himself  and  slip 
into  the  nearest  bar;  at  home  he  made  continual 
visits  to  the  dining-room  sideboard,  in  which  he  kept 
a  bottle;  and  Edith  had  lost  the  heart  to  protest. 

She  thought  about  seeking  consolation  of  Diana 
— she  was  no  longer  too  proud  to  acknowledge  the 
need  of  sympathy  and  to  seek  it — but  she  remem 
bered  that  Diana  had  withdrawn  herself  from  their 
last  meeting  in  a  mood  anything  but  sympathetic. 
Edith  was  therefore  not  surprised  to  have  Diana 
try  to  hurry  by  her  when,  one  afternoon,  they  met 
on  Broadway  near  Twenty-third  Street. 


JIM  277 

"  Aren't  you  going  to  talk  to  me?  "  The  words 
came  impulsively  from  Edith. 

Diana  stopped.  A  sad  little  smile  played  over 
her  fine  lips. 

"  I  didn't  know  you'd  want  me  to  bore  you,"  she 
said. 

Edith  took  her  friend's  reluctant  hand.  Already 
she  had  made  the  first  advance;  for  the  moment  re 
pression  ceased  to  matter. 

"  Oh,  of  course  you  think  I'm  a  poor  sort  be 
cause  I  don't  see  things  the  way  you  do,"  she  said. 
"But — can't  we  be  friends  anyhow?" 

The  day  was  hot.  Yellow  sunshine  poured  into 
Madison  Square.  Through  it  the  high  edge  of  the 
Flatiron  Building  seemed  to  quiver  northward  as  if 
it  were  the  prow  of  a  great  ocean-liner  seen  from  a 
dory.  The  seven  hundred  feet  of  the  Metropolitan 
Life  Insurance  Company's  tower  glittered  like  an 
Alpine  summit. 

"  Oh,  yes !  "  said  Diana.  "  We  can  be  friends." 
She  stood  facing  Edith  uncertainly. 

"  Then  let's — let's  sit  down  somewhere  and 
talk."  Edith's  brown  eyes  wandered  to  the  cool 
ness  of  the  crowded  Square.  "  I  wonder  if  there's 
an  empty  bench  over  there,  and  if  it'd  be  very  ter 
rible  if  we  sat  on  it." 

She  led  the  way  across  the  street.  They  passed 
the  bronze,  beneficent  Farragut  of  Saint-Gaudens 
and  followed  a  curving  path  toward  the  Madison 
Avenue  side  of  the  Square,  past  benches  on  which 
sprawled  derelicts  who,  Edith  flashingly  thought, 
could  not  be  more  dispirited  than  was  she.  They 


278  JIM 

found  an  empty  seat  facing  the  Manhattan  Club 
and  took  it. 

"  I  certainly  have  been  having  bad  luck,"  said 
Edith.  "  I  don't  know  what's  going  to  happen 
next." 

She  had  found  that  for  once  she  must  tell  an 
other  woman  of  her  troubles.  Not  all  of  her  trou 
bles:  even  now  Edith  could  not  tell  the  truth  about 
her  husband;  but  she  had  to  find  consolation  in  the 
statement  of  at  least  a  few  of  her  difficulties  to  a 
member  of  her  own  sex.  It  is  an  impulse  that  we 
attribute  to  all  women  at  all  times,  whereas  it  is 
common  to  both  men  and  women,  occurring  only 
at  the  height  of  long  fatigue,  but  then  occurring 
irresistibly.  Edith  explained  her  equivocal  position 
as  an  unpaying  inmate  of  Mame's  house;  she  poured 
out  the  history  of  the  invention;  for  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  she  speculated  upon  the  oncoming  disaster 
— and  through  it  all  Diana  listened  with  that  sad 
little  smile. 

"We've  been  dreadfully  poor,"  said  Edith; 
"  we've  been  so  poor  that  I  used  to  think  there 
couldn't  be  worse  poverty;  and  now  we're  going 
to  have  worse.  We're  almost  sure  to.  Our  only 
chance  is  the  Mr.  Tyrrell  I've  been  telling  you 
about,  and  he  can't  or  won't  invest  in  the  sounder 
till  he  can  sell  some  other  stocks  at  a  profit.  He 
has  to  wait  for  what's  called  '  a  rising  market,' 
Charley  says;  and  I  know  if  the  market  doesn't  rise 
soon  we'll  be  ruined — absolutely  ruined.  I  don't 
know  what  on  earth  we're  going  to  do." 

Diana  was  sitting  with  her  slim  hands  clasped 
on  her  knees,  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  figure  of  her 


JIM  279 

titular  goddess  that  tops  the  tower  of  Madison 
Square  Garden.  The  city  is  under  the  goddess's 
feet;  she  is  flying,  she  is  free:  Diana  Wentworth 
turned  to  Edith  a  face  strongly  altered  from  the 
face  of  the  pseudo-revolutionist  that  her  companion 
used  to  know.  She  was  still  smiling,  but  that  face 
was  the  face  of  a  woman  whom  life  has  conquered. 

"  You  have  your  husband  left,"  she  said  very 
quietly.  "  Nothing  really  matters  so  long  as  you 
have  your  husband,  and  so  long  as  he's  glad  to 
have  you." 

Then  Edith  understood  the  meaning  of  that  sad 
little  smile.  Her  own  troubles  had  blinded  her  to 
every  sign  of  troubles  in  others,  but,  upon  these 
words,  she  remembered  van  Houyz  as  she  had  seen 
him  at  the  Ritz-Carlton  with  Sylvia  Tytus. 

"  Diana,"  she  said,  "  you  don't  mean- 
Diana  nodded.  "  But  there's  no  use  talking  about 
it,"  she  explained. 

"  It's  that  Tytus  woman?  " 

"Yes,"  said  Diana,  softly,  "it's  that  Tytus 
woman.  Nothing  really  wrong  has  happened " 

"  The  brainless,  ugly  cat!  "  cried  Edith. 

"  Oh,  yes" — Diana  wearily  conceded  it— "I  see 
now  that  she  is  brainless,  and  I  wonder  why  I  ever 
thought  she  was  good-looking;  but  that  doesn't 
help  much,  does  it?  I  don't  blame  her:  I  know  if 
it  hadn't  been  Sylvia  it  would  have  been  somebody 
else."  She  stood  up. 

Edith  knew  that  Diana  was  running  away;  that 
she  would  rather  run  away  than  talk  of  this.  One 
word  more  seemed,  however,  imperative. 

"  But  you'll  divorce  him." 


280  JIM 

"  No,  I  won't  divorce  him,  dear." 

"I  see.  Perhaps  you're  right;  I  don't  blame 
you  for  not  wanting  to  give  him  up  to  her." 

"  Ah  " — Diana  looked  away — "  he's  already 
taken.  Besides,  you  see,  he's  poor:  he  doesn't  want 
a  divorce." 

Edith  had  risen,  too.  She  remembered  Diana's 
declarations  of  her  own  "  Freedom "  and  van 
Houyz's;  her  praise  of  Edith's  course  in  the  pro 
ceedings  against  Jim;  her  former  scorn  of  holding 
a  husband  to  vows  that  he  might  want  to  break. 
This  was  not  that  same  Diana  who  had  held  such 
views;  but  now,  somehow,  there  was  nothing  hu 
morous  in  the  alteration. 

"  Anyhow,"  said  Edith,  "  you  ought  to  use  your 
own  freedom:  you  ought  to  get  square  with  him 
that  way." 

The  violet  deepened  in  Diana's  eyes. 

"  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  I  could  do  that,  espe 
cially  as  it's  me  that  makes  the  money.  Only- 
well,  I  don't  happen  to  want  to."  She  smiled 
again.  "  I  suppose  I'm  not  that  type,"  she  added. 

Edith  walked  slowly  to  the  Twenty-third  Street 
subway  station.  Her  thoughts  were  quoting  some 
thing  that  Diana  had  said: 

"  '  Nothing  really  matters  so  long  as  you  have 
your  husband,  and  so  long  as  he's  glad  to  have 
you." 

"  I  wonder  if  everybody's  not  pretending  just  the 
way  I  am,"  thought  Edith.  "  I  wonder  if  it  isn't 
all  a  lie,*5 


SIXTEENTH  CHAPTER 

WHEN  he  came  home  that  evening,  Char 
ley  wore  a  more  hopeful  air  than  he  had 
worn  for  many  days. 

'  The  market's  rising,"  he  said:  "  it's  rising  stead 
ily;  and  I  think,  from  what  Tyrrell  'phoned  me 
a  little  while  ago,  he's  going  to  come  across  at  last. 
He  'phoned  me  from  the  Waldorf  to  meet  him  in 
the  lobby  there  at  eight  o'clock  this  evening."  Char 
ley  looked  at  his  watch.  "  It's  nearly  seven  now. 
I  got  to  hustle." 

He  went  out  immediately  after  bolting  his  dinner, 
and  Mame,  bound  for  her  Mrs.  Hamilton's  and 
then  for  a  meeting  of  her  missionary-society,  went 
out  with  him.  Edith  had  gone  upstairs  to  the  lonely 
sitting-room  when  the  maid  appeared  there  and 
announced  Tyrrell. 

§  2.  He  was  standing  in  the  antiquated  parlor, 
where  Edith  was  always  ashamed  to  receive  him 
because  it  seemed  so  old-fashioned  and  he  and  she 
so  out  of  place  in  it.  He  was  leaning,  as  she  en 
tered,  against  the  marble  mantel-piece,  lithe  and 
easy  in  his  evening-clothes,  fingering  his  small 
mustache. 

"But,"  said  Edith,  "didn't  the  maid  tell  you? 
Charley's  just  gone  out." 

He  repeated:  u  Gone  out?  " 

"  Yes :  to  meet  you." 

281 


282  JIM 

Tyrrell's  handsome  face  was  puzzled: 

"  I  thought  we  were  to  meet  here.  Where's  he 
gone?" 

"  To  the  Waldorf.  He  said  you  'phoned  him 
that  you'd  be  there." 

"  No,  no.  I  told  him  I  was  telephoning  from 
the  Waldorf.  I  meant  to  give  him  to  understand 
that  I  was  coming  up  here."  He  laughed  a  lit 
tle,  and  Edith  caught  herself  speculating  whether 
that  laugh  rang  wholly  true.  "  Well,"  he  went  on, 
"  if  I  went  after  your  husband,  I  should  only  miss 
him:  by  the  time  I  got  to  the  Waldorf  he'd  be  sure 
to  be  gone.  Of  course  he'll  look  next  at  my  club 
for  me,  but  I  might  miss  him  there,  too.  Since  I've 
been  so  stupid,  I  suppose  the  best  thing  for  me  to 
do  is  to  wait  here  till  he  comes  back.  Will  you 
try  to  put  up  with  me,  Mrs.  Vanaman?  " 

He  was  right,  and  she  was  not  loath  to  admit 
it;  in  spite  of  the  importance  of  Charley's  pro 
spective  interview,  she  was  flattered  by  the  guess 
that  this  misunderstanding  might  have  been  willful. 
The  business  matters  were  safe  enough:  they  would 
be  attended  to  on  her  husband's  return.  Meantime, 
it  was  pleasant  to  find  Tyrrell  so  obviously  contented 
to  sit  on  a  sofa  beside  her  in  the  old-fashioned  par 
lor  and  to  have  him  talk  to  her  in  a  tone  that  rapidly 
became  more  serious  than  any  they  had  previously 
adopted  in  their  latterly  not  infrequent  tete-a-tetes. 

Somehow,  with  her  warm  brown  eyes  on  his  firm 
face,  she  fell  again  to  telling  him,  if  not  all  that 
there  was  to  tell  about  herself,  at  least  more  than 
she  was  in  the  habit  of  telling  other  people:  as 
much,  almost,  as  she  had  told  Diana  that  afternoon. 


JIM  283 

Had  he  been  right,  on  the  evening  of  the  elder 
Vanaman's  death,  to  say  that  all  would  turn  out 
well?  No,  he  had  not  been  right.  The  mood  for 
confidences  was  still  strongly  upon  her:  she  pointed 
out  to  him,  as  delicately  as  she  could,  the  ambiguous 
position  in  which  the  will  left  her  and  her  husband, 
and  she  did  not  hesitate  to  hint  that  she  could  not 
bring  herself  to  be  really  friendly  with  Charley's 
sister. 

"  Miss  Vanaman  struck  me,"  said  Tyrrell,  "  as 
being  entirely  amiable." 

"  She  is,"  said  Edith;  "but — you've  seen  her." 

;'  Well,  after  all,"  he  submitted,  "  you  have  your 
husband." 

There  it  was  again,  nearly  in  Diana's  words. 
Edith  thought  of  Diana's  plight.  She  thought  of 
how  that  plight  and  her  own  had  made  her  wonder 
whether  the  entire  attitude  of  the  world's  married 
women  was  not  a  conspiracy  of  faith  betrayed  to 
delude  the  world's  unmarried.  Oddly  in  contrast, 
the  memory  of  that  picture  by  Jim,  the  picture  of 
the  tango-dancers,  came  back  to  her:  the  joy  of 
life  as  he  saw  it  against  the  drab  monotony  of  life 
as  she  must  live  it  in  this  house.  Once  more,  from 
this,  followed  the  realization  of  all  that  she  had 
suffered.  If  this  man  was  to  help  Charley  with 
money,  why  should  he  not  help  her,  as  he  had  once 
helped  her,  with  a  taste  of  gladness? 

She  shrugged  her  graceful  shoulders. 

"  Yes,  I  have  my  husband — for  the  evenings. 
And  even  on  some  of  those  his  business  keeps  him 
away." 

"  Ah,  yes,  of  course." — It  was  a  too  ready  agree- 


284  JIM 

ment:  to-night  Tyrrell  seemed  less  suave  than  she 
had  ever  known  him.  "  And  so  you're  a  little 
lonely?" 

"  Sometimes;  and  I  don't  like  it." 

"No  doubt;  only,  don't  we  all  have  to  be  more 
or  less  lonely?  Isn't  that  the  law  of  life?  " 

She  hesitated  scarcely  a  moment.  "For  you?" 
she  asked. 

"  Sometimes  I  think  most  of  all  for  me." 

*'  I  shouldn't  have  supposed  so,"  said  Edith.  She 
was  looking  at  the  floor,  which  was  disfigured  by  a 
hideous  Brussels  carpet,  but  she  shot  a  brown  glance 
at  him. 

'  You  mean,"  he  quickly  took  her  up,  "  that  I  con 
sole  myself?  " 

Edith  resumed  her  inspection  of  the  carpet. 

"  I  mean,"  said  she,  "  that  I  haven't  forgotten  the 
first  time  I  saw  you,  and  that  then  you  were  con 
soling  yourself  so  well  that  you  didn't  see  me." 

While  she  said  it,  she  was  wondering  what  made 
her  say  it,  telling  herself  that  this  man's  affairs 
could  be  nothing  to  her.  Yet  she  wanted  to  know 
more  about  them — about  him.  She  wanted  to  know 
that  she  had  been  mistaken;  she  wanted  to  have  out 
with  him  the  discussion  that  their  first  meeting  at 
the  Knickerbocker  had,  after  all,  left  magnificently 
in  the  air. 

"  Oh,  but  I  explained  all  that  to  you  long  ago." 

"Did  you?" 

"  Of  course  I  did.  You  can't  have  forgotten  the 
day  we  met  on  Forty-second  Street." 

He  went  back  to  that  day  and  to  that  conversa 
tion.  He  repeated  his  part  in  it.  Of  the  incident 


JIM  285 

at  Charley's  office  he  did  not  say  much  that  was 
new,  but  he  ended  by  saying: 

"  I'm  sorry." 

"  For  the  stenographer?"  she  could  not  forbear 
inquiring. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  repeated.     "  You  understand." 

"  Oh,  I'm  sure  there  was  nothing  to  be  sorry 
for!  "  She  blushed  a  little  and  then  added:  "Was 
there?" 

4  There  was  a  great  deal,  for  there  was  this :  that 
I  didn't  observe  you." 

*'  She  was  a  very  pretty  girl,  Mr.  Tyrrell." 

He  caught  her  gaze  and  held  it. 

"  Do  you  think,"  he  asked,  slowly,  "  that  such 
things  count?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Edith,  her  color  deepening, 
"  exactly  what  you  mean.  I  should  think  that 
whether  they  count  or  not  depends  on  whether  you 
let  them  count." 

He  seemed  truly  distressed. 

"  Really,  really,  Mrs.  Vanaman,"  he  said,  in  a 
voice  that  was  low  and  unsteady,  "  you  mustn't 

think A  stenographer!     I'm  not  a  snob,  but 

neither  am  I  a  cad!  " 

"  Then  why  " — she  met  him  with  a  look  that 
went  deep — "  why  do  you  feel  you  must  explain  to 
me?" 

She  was  feeling  now  what  she  had  felt  before  with 
him :  the  strange  fascination  of  fascinating  him.  She 
had  felt  it  in  their  dancing  when,  as  his  conscious 
ness  ruled  her  body,  her  body  fired  his  emotions.  It 
was  much  that  he  was  handsome  and  beside  her;  it 
was  more  that  he  was  of  a  grain  finer  than  Char- 


286  JIM 

ley.  She  felt  the  thrill  of  power  over  Tyrrell — and, 
feeling  the  thrill  of  power  over  him,  she  let  him 
take  her  hand. 

He  answered  slowly,  his  eyes  .on  hers : 

"  I  explain  it  because  I'm  lonely,  too,  here  in  New 
York,  and  don't  want  to  lose  the  friendship  of  the 
only  really  fine  woman  that  has  been  my  friend.  Be 
cause " 

"Hello!"  said  Charley. 

They  both  started  to  see  Vanaman  entering  the 
room.  Tyrrell  dropped  Edith's  hand;  he  was  wholly 
self-possessed,  but  Edith,  clearly  perceiving  that 
Charley  was  making  a  doubtful  effort  at  self-control, 
felt  a  quick  anger  against  her  husband's  intrusion. 

'  You've  come  just  at  the  end  of  my  experiment 
in  fortune-telling,"  said  Tyrrell,  rising.  "  I  find 
that  your  wife  is  to  be  a  rich  woman.  Where  have 
you  been?  I  thought  we  were  to  meet  each  other 
here." 

Charley's  eyes  were  hot. 

'  You  said  the  lobby  of  the  Waldorf,"  he  cor 
rected. 

"  Did  it  sound  that  way  to  you?  "  Tyrrell  saun 
tered  back  to  the  mantel-piece.  "  That's  what  Mrs. 
Vanaman's  been  saying.  I'm  sorry  if  I  gave  you  a 
run  down  there  for  nothing.  I  never  could  make 
myself  understood  over  a  telephone." 

Vanaman  grunted  an  indistinguishable  reply. 

"  Edith,"  he  added,  "  you'd  better  leave  us  alone 
for  a  little  while.  We've  got  to  talk  business." 


SEVENTEENTH  CHAPTER 

SHE  left  them  without  a  glance  at  either.  She 
went  upstairs,  trembling  a  little  from  fear  of 
what  her  husband  might  do  or  say  to  ruin  his 
chances  of  financial  help  from  Tyrrell,  but  trem 
bling  more  from  fear  of  how  he  might  compromise 
her  with  the  guest. 

Then  anger  came  and  crowded  out  her  fear.  En 
tering  the  house  noiselessly,  dropping  into  the  room 
as  a  policeman  drops  upon  a  burglar,  Charley  had 
no  right  to  put  on  the  uniform  of  an  injured  hus 
band.  It  did  occur  to  her — what  was  the  fact— 
that  Charley's  entrance  had  not  been  quieter  than 
was  its  wont,  but  that  her  absorption  and  Tyrrell's 
was  deeper:  she  dismissed  the  idea.  What  was  there 
for  him  to  see?  Her  guest  had  been  holding  her 
hand.  In  that  there  was  nothing  so  dreadful.  Men 
and  women  held  each  other's  hands,  Edith  argued, 
when  they  danced  together.  Besides,  Tyrrell  had 
given  the  explanation  of  fortune-telling,  and  that 
should  have  been  sufficient.  Whatever  the  circum 
stances  of  his  entrance,  and  whatever  he  deduced 
from  whatever  he  saw,  Charley  should  have  con 
cealed  his  suspicions,  if  suspicions  there  must  be, 
until  he  was  alone  with  his  wife.  Tyrrell  certainly 
would  have  done  that;  Jim  would  not  have  sus 
pected. 

What  could  Charley  be  saying  now?  What,  in 
deed,  was  he  not  capable  of  saying?  It  might  con- 

287 


288  JIM 

cern  her  dignity;  it  was  certain  to  concern  her  well- 
being.  Edith  resolved  to  try  to  hear  it. 

She  reached  the  upper  floor  and  this  decision  at 
the  same  time.  She  leaned  over  the  stair-railing 
in  her  endeavor  to  hear  the  talk  that  was  going 
on  in  the  parlor  below.  It  was  useless:  her  ears 
could  detect  nothing  save  an  unintelligible  mur 
mur  of  their  voices,  now  antiphonal,  now  merged; 
no  separate  word  reached  her;  even  their  tones  were 
dulled  and  made  meaningless  by  a  closed  door. 
Nevertheless,  she  held  her  strained  position  until 
she  heard  Mame  returning  from  the  missionary- 
meeting. 

Edith  retreated  to  the  sitting-room.  Mame  had 
come  up  the  stairs  quickly,  and,  as  she  stood  blink 
ing  behind  her  thick  spectacles  in  the  light  of  the 
sitting-room  lamp,  Edith  felt  the  breeze  of  a  dim 
disapproval  emanate  from  that  uncertain  figure. 

"  Is  someone  in  the  parlor?  "  asked  Mame. 

Edith  nodded. 

"Who  is  it?" 

"  Mr.  Tyrrell." 

"  Oh!  "  Mame  took  off  her  hat  and  sat  down. 
"  He's  not  alone  there,  is  he?  " 

"  Charley's  with  him." 

"  I  thought  it  was  him  Charley  went  down  to  the 
Waldorf  to  meet." 

"  He  did."  Edith  was  annoyed  by  this  mild  but 
persistent  examination.  "  There  was  some  sort  of 
mistake  about  the  engagement,  and  Mr.  Tyrrell 
came  up  here." 

"  And  Charley  came  afterward?" 


JIM  289 

Edith  did  not  reply.  She  sat  down  and  opened  a 
book. 

"And  Charley  came  afterward?"  Mame  kept 
it  up. 

"  Yes." 

Mame  reached  for  her  work-basket  from  the 
center-table  on  which  the  lamp  stood.  She  took  out 
some  sewing. 

"  Did  he  have  to  wait  long?  "  she  asked. 

Edith  was  not  reading,  but  she  would  not  raise 
her  glance  from  her  book. 

"  Did  who  have  to  wait  long?  " 

"  Well,  either  of  them,  dear.  If  one  did,  the 
other  did,  didn't  he?  I  was  thinking  of  Mr. 
Tyrrell." 

"  Not  very  long,"  said  Edith. 

Mame  sewed  for  a  while  in  silence,  her  head  bent 
close  to  her  work. 

"  Do  you  know,"  she  said,  presently,  "  I  thought 
when  I  came  in  I  saw  you  leaning  over  the  banister." 

Edith  said  nothing,  but  she  felt  the  blood  in  her 
cheeks. 

"  We  had  a  fine  meeting,"  Mame  pursued:  "  real 
splendid,  it  was.  Sallie  Hamilton  made  the  open 
ing  prayer,  and  I  never  heard  her  pray  better.  The 
treasurer's  report  showed  we'd  made  forty-two  dol 
lars  and  thirty-four  cents  at  the  bazaar  last  week." 
She  paused  and  looked  at  the  ceiling  for  inspira 
tion.  "  Or  was  it  forty-two  dollars  and  forty-three 
cents?" 

Edith  left  decision  to  the  ceiling,  and,  that  refus 
ing  information,  Mame  went  on: 

"  Mrs.  Colly  made  a  good  speech,  too.    She  really 


290  JIM 

near  convinced  me  the  home  missionary  field  was 
almost  as  important  as  the  foreign  one;  but  she 
did  have  to  admit  a  land  where  everybody's  Chris 
tians,  like  ours,  can't  be  quite  so  important  as  where 
everybody's  a  heathen.  And  as  I  said  to  Mrs.  Ham 
ilton  on  the  way  home,  at  least  we've  taught  them 
to  wear  clothes  and  that's  a  great  deal." 

It  was  evident  that  Edith  must  say  something. 
She  had  thought  of  the  van  Houyz  doctrine  con 
cerning  clothes. 

"  A  great  deal,"  she  assented,  her  eyes  on  her 
book.  Charley  seemed  to  be  keeping  Tyrrell  a  long 
time.  What  was  it  that  was  happening  down 
there? 

"  You'd  have  been  interested  at  the  meeting," 
said  Mame. 

"Yes,"  said  Edith.  (If  only  Mame  had  not 
come  back  so  soon,  and  if  only  the  eavesdropping 
had  been  attempted  from  the  hall  instead  of  from 
the  stairs!) 

Mame's  vacuous  face  was  turned  upon  Edith. 

"  I  wish  you'd  go  with  me  sometimes.  It'd  been 
more  profitable  to-night,  for  instance,  than  staying 
here  alone." 

Edith  shut  her  book  with  a  bang.    She  stood  up. 

"  I  don't  care  about  such  things,"  she  said, 
sharply. 

"  I  know  you  don't,"  sighed  Mame.  "  I  wish  you 
did." 

"  And  I  won't  have  you  hinting  about  what  I've 
been  doing  while  you  were  gone." 

"  Why,  Edith "  Mame's  mouth  opened  in 

amazement. 


JIM  291 

"  I  won't !  I  won't  have  it !  "  She  turned  to  the 
door.  "  I'm  going  to  bed." 

But  as  she  stood  there  she  heard  the  men  come 
from  the  parlor  into  the  hall.  Then  the  front  door 
closed  on  Tyrrell's  departure,  and  Charley  came  up 
stairs. 

He  entered  the  sitting-room  as  Edith  was  leav 
ing  it.  His  broAvs  were  contracted,  his  mouth 
squared;  in  his  throat  a  jealous  anger  was  strain 
ing  almost  absurdly. 

"  Mame,"  said  he,  "  go  to  bed.  I  want  to  say 
something  to  Edith." 

Mame's  eyes  blinked,  but  she  left  the  room  with 
out  a  word. 

§  2.  Husband  and  wife  waited  until  they  heard  the 
sister's  footsteps  reach  the  higher  regions  of  the 
house;  they  waited  until  the  last  sound  of  her  prog 
ress  had  quite  died  away.  Then  Edith  hurried  to 
speak.  To  say  the  first  word  and  capture  the  role  of 
the  wronged  party  is  to  win  the  opening  skirmish  of 
most  domestic  battles,  and  Edith  lost  no  time  now. 

"You  disgrace  me!"  she  declared.  Her  voice 
shook,  but  only  with  rage;  eyes  and  cheeks  were 
ablaze;  her  nostrils  quivered. 

She  was  momentarily  successful.  They  stood  there 
facing  each  other,  she  with  her  head  high,  Charley 
glowering,  but  baffled. 

"  Disgrace  you?  "  He  could  not  follow  her.  "  / 
disgrace  you?  " 

"  Oh,  you  know  well  enough  what  I  mean — think 
ing  these  things  of  me  and  letting  Mr.  Tyrrell  see 
that  you  think  them." 


292  JIM 

"  Did  I  say  a  single  word?  " 
'  You  didn't  have  to.  You  looked  as  solemn  as 
a  funeral  and  as  angry  as  a  mad  bull.  I  saw  it 
and  he  saw  it.  You  needn't  think  he'll  put  money 
in  your  invention  if  you  keep  this  up.  The  idea 
of  you  suspecting  me  like  that!  " 

But  there  she  gave  him  an  opening.  He  turned 
on  her.  His  bloodshot  eyes  were  like  hot  coals, 
the  bags  under  them  were  black. 

"  It  was  perfectly  evident  that  you  were  trying 
to  flirt  with  him.  Why  shouldn't  I  suspect  you?" 
His  breath  came  short.  "  I  know  what  you're  think 
ing,"  he  burst  out.  "  You're  making  more  of  your 
comparisons.  I  see  you  making  them  in  your  own 
mind  and  hiding  them  there  every  day — comparing 
me  with  Jim !  " 

Edith's  rages  were  seldom  ineffective.  Charley 
had  probed  her  secret.  It  was  a  secret  of  which 
she  herself  was  scarcely  conscious;  it  was  a  sore 
secret  because,  however  often  she  might  think  of 
some  good  point  in  Jim,  she  hated  Jim  the  more 
that  she  thought  of  any  virtue  in  him;  but  her  pres 
ent  husband  had  found  a  half  truth  and  had  drawn 
it  from  that  inner  self  which  resents  the  bringing 
of  its  concepts  to  light.  She  glared  at  Charley 
as  a  puma  glares  before  it  springs.  Her  bosom 
rose  and  fell;  her  brown  eyes  launched  green 
rays. 

"You  invite  comparison!"  she  cried.  "You  in 
vite  it.  Jim  would  never  have  suspected  me  like 
this." 

Charley  did  not  quail:  his  jealousy  was  too  hot. 
He  bent  toward  her. 


JIM  293 

;'  The  more  fool  Jim,"  he  said:  "  and  you  and  I 
know  that  better  than  anybody." 

What  they  had  done  to  the  hurt  of  each  other 
when  they  joined  together  to  hurt  Jim!  The  words 
struck  her  face  first  white  and  then  crimson.  Whether 
from  the  force  of  the  attack,  or  because  she  could 
think  of  no  more  potent  way  of  repelling  it, 
Edith  started  back  and  collapsed,  sobbing,  on  a 
sofa. 

If  she  had  a  mind  to  faint,  Charley  would  not 
regard  it.  He  had,  and  he  meant  to  keep,  the  upper 
hand.  He  merely  strode  closer  and  stood  threat 
eningly  above  her. 

"If  he  ever  strikes  me!"  she  thought.  "Jim 
never  struck  me.  If  this  man  ever  strikes  me,  I'll 
leave  him:  I'll- 

'  You  forget,"  he  was  saying,  "  that  you  suspected 
me,  and  for  the  same  reason.  You  made  me  fire  my 
stenographer.  You  made  me  fire  Miss  Girodet,  and 
now  you've  got — just  a  moment,  please;  don't  in 
terrupt — now  you've  got  to  drop  Bob  Tyrrell." 

He  had  beaten.  She  tried  one  more  attack  with 
that  one  of  her  weapons  which  came  readiest  to 
hand:  she  tried  hysterics,  but  her  physical  contor 
tions  were  as  ugly  to  him  as  her  mental  had  been, 
and,  quite  suddenly,  she  felt  the  last  ounce  of  her 
resistance  leave  her.  It  would  come  back  again; 
it  would  be  renewed;  but  not  to-night.  To-night  all 
that  she  wanted  was  the  end  of  this  quarrel.  A  mad 
ness  for  rest  possessed  her.  The  thought  of  quiet 
shimmered  in  her  brain  as  the  false  vision  of  a  pool 
shimmers  in  the  brain  of  a  man  lost  in  the  desert 
and  perishing  for  thirst.  She  would  have  promised 


294  JIM 

anything  for  it.  She  did  promise  what  Charley 
asked. 

"  I  don't  care  if  I  never  see  or  speak  to  Mr.  Tyr 
rell  again,"  she  vowed;  "  and  I  never  will." 

"  All  right,"  said  Charley. 

Still  sobbing,  she  got  up  to  go.  She  hoped  that 
he  would  not  come  to  bed  just  yet;  but,  even  at 
that  moment,  her  sense  for  the  practical  painfully 
asserted  itself. 

"  And  then,"  she  continued,  with  averted  face,  "  if 
we  drop  him,  where  will  you  get  the  money  that 
you've  got  to  get?  What  did  you  say  to  him  to 
night?" 

Charley  turned  away. 

"  Never  you  mind  about  that,"  he  said  in  a  dust- 
dry  echo  of  his  old  chuckle.  "  I'll  get  the  money,  all 
right." 

He  would  pay  no  further  attention  to  her.  He 
left  her  on  the  landing  as  she  went  to  their  bed 
room,  and,  though  she  sobbed  so  hard  that  she  was 
sure  he  must  hear  through  the  door  which  she 
immediately  closed,  he  strolled  calmly  down  the 
stairs. 

She  knew  he  was  going  to  the  dining-room  to  com 
pose  himself  by  drinking.  She  was  glad  that  he  did 
not  follow  her. 

§3.  Beneath  all  his  arrogant  anger,  Charley,  as 
he  settled  himself  beside  a  bottle  in  the  dining-room, 
felt  something  like  a  reasonable  satisfaction  with  his 
night's  work.  He  reflected  on  his  recent  talk  with 
Tyrrell,  and,  reflecting  on  this,  he  smiled  commen 
dation  at  his  ability  to  manage  women.  For  he  now 


JIM  295 

assured  himself  that  Edith's  tears  had  proved  she 
really  loved  him,  and  so  he  concluded  that  he  had 
merely  properly  checked  her  at  the  start  of  a  little 
flirtation.  He  had  succeeded  in  keeping  from  her 
what  he  had  said  to  their  guest;  he  had  left  her  in 
a  healthy  state  of  uncertainty  and  fear;  and  yet  his 
talk  with  Tyrrell  had  been  wholly  friendly  and  re 
sulted  in  no  more  than  the  fixing  of  a  final  business 
appointment  for  the  next  day. 

It  was  to  this  end  that  Tyrrell  had  wanted  to  see 
him.  The  Bostonian  explained,  what  he  did  not 
wish  to  say  through  a  telephone,  that  the  stock  he 
wanted  to  rid  himself  of  would  be  disposed  of  at 
private  sale  on  the  morrow  to  certain  officers  of  a 
company  competing  with  that  which  issued  the  stock. 
The  proceeds  would,  of  course,  go  into  the  Vanaman 
Sounder  Company. 

Charley  poured  himself  a  fresh  drink  and  smiled 
at  his  good  fortune.  The  luck  had  changed  at  last. 
He  would  beat  Jim  at  the  money  game — beat  him 
hopelessly — and  there  was  a  pleasant  irony  in  the 
fact  that  it  was  Jim's  own  work,  Jim's  "  Tango," 
which  had  given  the  last  spur  to  Charley's  endeav 
ors.  They  would  make  him,  in  the  end,  one  of  the 
richest  men  in  America. 

There  was  no  need  to  worry  any  more  about  mate 
rial  matters;  nor  was  there  now  any  need  to  worry 
about  Edith.  Charley  had  decided  that  she  should 
be  protected  from  temptation  and  that,  for  this  rea 
son,  Tyrrell  should  never  again  enter  the  Vanaman 
house;  but  the  inventor  intended  that  these  matters 
should  be  arranged  diplomatically:  if  the  Bostonian 


296  JIM 

ever  realized  it,  he  would  realize  it  only  after  his 
money  had  passed  into  Charley's  hands. 

For  the  sounder  had  now  reached  the  last  stage 
of  its  trial  existence.  The  next  fortnight  would,  its 
inventor  did  not  conceal  from  himself,  prove  either 
its  success  or  its  inventor's  ruin.  By  the  use  of  the 
last  lies  and  the  last  appeals,  duns  could  be  kept 
waiting  that  much  longer,  and  by  the  end  of  that 
time  a  corporation  must  be  afloat.  Charley  had 
taken  the  perilous  steps.  A  vast  deal  of  advertising 
had  been  done.  There  were  bills,  new  and  old,  from 
the  newspapers,  and  heavier  bills  from  the  job- 
printers,  the  old  long  overdue,  all  clamoring  for  pay 
ment.  A  single  suit  for  debt,  and  his  entire  scheme 
would  come  crashing  about  his  head;  Tyrrell's  help, 
and  he  would  triumph. — Well,  Tyrrell  was  going  to 
help.  .  .  . 

That  night,  after  he  had  drunk  more  than  was 
good  for  him,  the  successful  manager  of  women  and 
investors  went  to  bed  serenely  certain;  but  the  next 
morning  there  happened  something  on  which  he  had 
not  counted.  He  failed  to  count  on  it  because  he 
did  not  know  his  wife. 

§  4.  His  wife  waited  nervously  for  ten  o'clock. 
At  ten  o'clock  she  was  going  to  telephone  for  Tyr 
rell.  It  would  be  perilous  to  call  him  before  that 
hour:  she  knew  that  men  do  not  like  to  be  brought 
direct  from  bed  to  business,  and  Tyrrell,  who 
stopped  at  his  club  when  in  New  York,  never  came 
down  to  breakfast  before  ten. 

She  had  been  thinking  things  over.  The  exhaus 
tion  of  her  quarrel  had  lessened;  she  was  still  tired, 


JIM  297 

but  her  very  physical  weariness  stirred  her  to  ab 
normal  nervous  activity.  Money,  she  knew,  she 
and  Charley  must  have  and  have  immediately:  dur 
ing  the  past  few  days  she  had  learned  enough  of  the 
new  company  to  know  that.  Charley's  ruin  would 
no  longer  have  meant  much  to  her  had  it  not  in 
volved  her  own,  but  it  did  involve  her  own:  she 
was  tied  to  this  man  to  sink  or  swim.  If  he  sank, 
she  must  go  down  with  him;  if  he  swam  to  affluence 
— if  he  swam  at  all,  it  would  be  to  affluence — she 
would  probably  be  no  more  unhappy  than  most  mar 
ried  women.  Tied  to  him,  she  had  her  just  claims 
upon  him;  without  her  concurrence,  Charley  had  no 
right  to  throw  away  their  common  chances  of  sal 
vation.  Jim  would  not  have  done  such  a  thing,  fool 
as  Jim  was — and  he  was  rich  and  successful  now, 
while  she  was  poor  and  wretched:  if  only  to  show 
Jim  she  did  not  need  him,  she  would  save  herself 
and  Charley  with  her.  She  remembered  how  she 
had  once  resolved  that  Charley  must  be  more  suc 
cessful  than  Jim,  and  that  she  would  make  him  so: 
to-day  her  one  desire  was  to  save  Charley  in  order 
to  save  herself. 

Her  husband  had  gone  to  his  work  without  a 
further  hint  of  what  he  had  said  to  Tyrrell,  and 
Edith  was  too  proud  to  ask  him  again.  She  was 
satisfied  that,  if  Charley  had  brought  about  an  open 
rupture,  he  could  not  get  the  money  elsewhere:  she 
had  learned  the  emptiness  of  his  boasting.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  thought  he  had  smoothed  Tyrrell 
by  diplomacy — well,  she  fancied  she  knew  Tyrrell 
better  than  Charley  knew  him,  and  she  had  no  faith 
in  Charley's  shirt-sleeve  diplomacy.  A  vow  wrung 


298  JIM 

from  her  as  her  husband  had  wrung  from  her  that 
vow  never  to  see  or  communicate  with  Tyrrell  had 
no  binding  power.  Besides,  and  apart  from  all  the 
demands  of  material  necessity,  her  former  feeling 
for  Tyrrell  had  now  returned  in  its  full  force.  .  .  . 

It  was  hard  to  wait.  She  watched  the  clock  as 
eagerly  as  she  had  once  looked  at  it  when  awaiting 
Charley.  The  minutes  dragged,  and  Mame  was  an 
noying.  On  most  mornings,  Edith's  sister-in-law  was 
busy  directing  household  matters,  but  to-day  she 
buzzed  about  Edith  like  a  persistent  fly:  she  hovered 
about  the  sitting-room  door.  When  at  last  the  hall- 
clock  struck  ten,  she  came  in  and  sat  down.  Edith 
waited  for  ten  minutes  more.  Then  she  got  up. 

"  Where  are  you  going?  "  asked  Mame. 

Her  mild  tone  angered  Edith,  who  now  decided 
to  go  to  the  nearest  pay-station  and  telephone  from 
there ;  she  ought  to  have  thought  of  that  in  the  first 
place. 

"  Out,"  she  said. 

"What  on  earth  for?" 

"  I  want  to  get  something."  If  the  woman  held 
her  much  longer,  Tyrrell  would  have  left  his  club, 
and  there  was  no  telling  where  to  look  for  him 
then. 

"  What  do  you  want  to  get?  "  Mame  inquired. 

"  I — some  tooth-paste,"  said  Edith. 

"  I  only  asked,"  Mame  explained,  "  because  I 
have  to  go  out  in  a  minute.  Why  can't  I  get  it 
for  you?  " 

There  was  nothing  to  do  but  let  her  go. 

She  took  an  interminable  time  going,  but  she 
went  at  last,  and,  so  soon  as  the  front-door  closed 


JIM  299 

on  her,  Edith  darted  downstairs  to  the  telephone 
in  the  hall. 

The  exchange  was  slow  in  making  the  connection, 
and,  when  the  club  had  answered,  what  seemed  an 
inexcusable  time  was  needed  to  bring  Tyrrell  to  his 
end  of  the  wire.  There  was  every  reason  for  hurry: 
Edith  did  not  waste  preliminaries;  she  directly 
apologized  for  her  husband's  rudeness. 

"  I  hope  you  didn't  much  mind.  He's  all  worked 
up  over  his  invention,"  she  explained,  "  and  he's 
really  not  himself." — Why  blink  facts?  She  went 
on :  "  If  he'd  only  been  himself,  of  course  he  wouldn't 
have  been  so  foolish  as  to  think — what  you  couldn't 
help  seeing  he  did  think." 

"  Oh !  "  Tyrrell's  voice  sounded  dryly  in  her 
ears.  "  So  that's  it,  is  it?  " 

She  had  made  a  terrible  blunder:  she  saw  it  then. 
Charley  had  used  diplomacy,  and  his  diplomacy  had, 
after  all,  succeeded.  She  should  have  proceeded 
more  slowly  and,  before  committing  herself,  found 
out  from  Tyrrell  exactly  what  had  happened.  But 
it  was  too  late  now:  she  must  make  the  best  of 
matters. 

"  I  was  afraid  that  was  it,"  she  answered.  "  Of 
course,  he  didn't  say— 

Tyrrell  interrupted — she  could  not  remember  that 
he  had  ever  interrupted  her  before: 

"I  see;  I  see.     How  absurd  of  him." 

"Yes,"  said  Edith,  "isn't  it?" 

"  So  I  suppose  you  want  me,  after  this,  to  give 
you  the  room  that  will  be  better  than  my  company, 
Mrs.  Vanaman?  " 

If  only  she  had  been  face  to  face  with  him,  her 


300  JIM 

task  would  have  been  easy:  his  mobile,  sympathetic 
face  always  invited  her  confidence  and  gave  her 
sympathy : 

"Oh,  not  that!  I  only — I  only  wanted  you  to 
understand." 

"  I  understand  perfectly,"  said  Tyrrell. 

His  voice  told  her  that  he  did  not  at  all  under 
stand.  She  felt  still  more  strongly  the  need  of  his 
sympathy.  After  that  difficult  night  and  morning, 
she  yearned  for  it.  But  a  telephone  is  a  far  from 
sympathetic  instrument.  .  .  . 

"  Is  that  all?  "  came  Tyrrell's  voice. 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  said,  the  tears  coming  to  her 
eyes.  "  Oh,  I'm  so  unhappy  about  it.  Our — our 
friendship " 

"I'm  sorry,  too,"  said  Tyrrell;  "but  I  under 
stand." 

"  But  listen,"  Edith  began:  "if  you'll  only- 
Something  made  her  look  over  her  shoulder.    With 
a  quick  gasp,  she  hung  up  the  receiver. 

Mame  Vanaman  was  standing  in  the  doorway. 

§  5.  That  is  how  it  happened  that,  at  his  office, 
Charley,  at  the  moment  when  Tyrrell  should  have 
called  there  to  complete  their  deal,  received,  instead 
of  a  visit,  a  messenger-borne  letter  in  which  the 
prospective  investor  curtly  regretted  that  certain  re 
verses  on  the  market  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
offer  the  money  that  the  Vanaman  Sounder  required 
for  a  new  lease  of  life.  It  was  only  a  few  minutes 
later  that,  one  after  the  other,  the  lawyers  of  three 
of  the  sounder's  creditors  called  Charley  on  the  tele 
phone  and  threatened  to  enter  suit  immediately  un- 


JIM  301 

less  at  least  partial  payments  were  made  on  their 
creditors'  bills. 

Charley  crumpled  down  into  the  swivel-chair  be 
fore  his  desk.  The  blueprints  were  dancing  on  the 
wall,  the  sounder  mocked  him  from  the  table.  He 
was  alone  with  ruin. 

Automatically,  he  opened  the  bottom  drawer  of 
his  desk,  in  which  he  had  lately  been  keeping  a  bot 
tle  of  whisky.  He  brought  out  the  bottle  and  a  glass 
and  started  to  pour  himself  a  drink.  .  .  . 

It  was  the  end.  There  was  nothing  more.  This 
was  what  marrying  Jim  Trent's  wife  had  brought 
him  to.  He  had  emptied  every  coffer  of  resource; 
pledged  his  credit  thrice  over;  borrowed  the  last  ob 
tainable  cent  from  the  last  acquaintance.  Mame 
would  do  nothing;  he  knew  that;  she  would  stick 
to  his  father's  advice :  she  was  a  fool  to  do  it,  but, 
in  the  very  face  of  his  disaster,  she  would  do  it — 

He  had  more  than  filled  the  glass,  and  the  whisky 
was  running  over  on  his  hand. 

He  was  disgraced  and  ruined — irretrievably.  If 
only  Mame  were  not  a  fool,  if  she  could  only  see 
her  own  advantage.  .  .  . 

His  heedless  eye  fell  on  a  pigeon-hole  in  his  desk 
from  which  a  folded  gray  paper  protruded.  Spill 
ing  the  whisky,  he  drank  with  a  shaking  hand. 

Then  it  was  that  he  remembered  the  power-of- 
attorney  that  his  sister  had  given  him.  .  .  . 


EIGHTEENTH  CHAPTER 

WHEN  Charley  came  home  that  evening,  he 
was  a  frightened  and  bewildered  man: 
frightened  because  of  what  he  had  done; 
bewildered  because  he  could  not  see  the  course  of 
events  that  had  made  his  action  imperative.  There 
should  be  no  difficulty  about  keeping  Mame  in  the 
dark  until  the  thoroughly  launched  sounder  had 
earned  enough  money  to  replace  what  the  brother 
had  misappropriated — if  that  sum  in  excess  of  the 
misappropriation,  still  required  for  the  launching, 
could  be  secured — but  the  fact  that  the  misappro 
priation  had  been  made  was  hard  to  bear.  There 
might  even  be  no  trouble,  after  a  little  further  tam 
pering  with  Mame's  fortune,  in  getting  along  with 
out  Tyrrell's  aid,  but  the  fact  that  Tyrrell  had  with 
drawn  was  sinister.  In  the  circumstances,  the  last 
person  Vanaman  wanted  to  talk  about  was  Tyrrell, 
and  yet  about  Tyrrell,  as  it  chanced,  he  had  almost 
immediately  to  talk.  The  last  person  he  wanted  to 
see  was  Mame,  and  yet  Mame  was  the  first  person 
he  asked  for. 

"Where's  Mame?"  he  inquired  of  Edith,  who 
stood  as  if  waiting  for  him  in  the  upstairs  sitting- 
room. 

She  saw  him  as  a  loose,  slouching  figure,  a  man 
with  a  dull  gaze  that  became  furtive  when  he  spoke 
to  her.  He  saw  her  a  little  worn  and  dowdy — 
enough  dowdy  to  make  him  recall,  even  at  such  a 

302 


JIM  303 

time,  how  neat  she  had  always  seemed  when  she  was 
the  wife  of  Jim — but  still  with  much  of  her  old  pret- 
tiness,  in  her  face  a  strange  mixture  of  triumph, 
defiance,  and  timidity. 

"  She's  gone,"  said  Edith. 

"Gone?"  gasped  Charley.  It  seemed  as  if  his 
sister  might  have  achieved  the  impossible:  might 
have  learned  of  what  he  had  done.  "  What  do  you 
mean — '  gone  '  ?  " 

"  She's  left,"  said  Edith,  slowly.  "  And  because 
she  went,  the  maid  and  cook  went,  too.  They  never 
did  like  me  any  better  than  Mame  did."  Her  voice 
sharpened.  "  And  I  won't  do  the  housework,"  she 
added.  "  I  may  as  well  tell  you  that  right  now.  I 
never  had  to  do  any  housework  until  you — un 
til Jim  never  made  me  do  any,  and  I  won't  do 

it  now." 

Charley  heard  only  the  first  words  and  the  men 
tion  of  the  man  that  somehow  still  remained  his 
rival. 

"Jim!"  he  nearly  shouted.  "What  do  I  care 
about  Jim?  Where's  Mame?  That's  what  I  want 
to  know." 

"  And  it's  what  I'm  telling  you.    She's  gone." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  to  me  that  you've  suc 
ceeded  at  last  in  driving  my  sister  out  of  her  own 
house?  " 

Edith  was  now  resolutely  calm. 

"  If  you  had  your  rights,"  she  said,  "  it  would  be 
no  more  her  house  than  yours  and  mine." 

He  waved  this  aside: 

"  She's  gone  for  good?  " 

"  So  she  told  me." 


304  JIM 

Charley  felt  his  heart  freeze  in  his  breast.  If 
Edith  and  Mame  had  quarreled,  then  Mame  would 
regard  him  as  on  Edith's  side,  would  assume  that 
he  was  his  own  sister's  enemy.  If  the  quarrel  had 
indeed  resulted  in  Mame's  being  driven  from  the 
house,  then  Mame  would  almost  certainly  search  for 
new  allies:  she  was  a  woman  unable  to  exist  with 
out  friends  and,  in  the  lightest  change  of  her  daily 
life,  must  seek  a  counselor.  The  counselor  that, 
out  of  her  own  home,  she  would  be  sure  to  seek 
was  Zoller — Zoller,  who  had  been  her  father's  law 
yer;  Zoller,  who  was  a  member  of  her  church; 
Zoller,  who  had  always  suspected  Charley  and  might 
even  now  be  asking  questions  about  that  power-of- 
attorney.  All  the  rage  went  out  of  Charley;  this 
was  no  time  for  rage;  this  was  a  time  only  to  save 
himself  from  a  situation  that  might  end  in  his  ap 
prehension  as  a  thief. 

"  Good  God!  "  he  gasped.  "  We  mustn't  let  her 
go!  Where'd  she  go,  Edith?  I've  got  to  go  right- 
after  her  and  bring  her  back." 

Edith  supposed  that  he  was  merely  whining  over 
the  departure  of  a  sister  whom  he  now  preferred 
to  his  wife :  "  She  said  she  was  going  to  stop  for 
a  time  at  Mrs.  Hamilton's.  I  daresay  you  know  the 
address,  for  Mrs.  Hamilton  is  an  officer  in  one  of 
Mame's  church-societies."  She  had  spoken  coldly. 
Now  her  cheeks  and  her  voice  warmed  together: 
"  But  I  want  you  to  understand  one  thing,  Charley: 
you  can't  bring  her  back  here  if  I  am  to  stay.  I 
won't  live  with  her  any  more." 

"You    won't?      You've    got    to!"      Vanaman's 


JIM  305 

mystification  overcame  him.  "  In  Heaven's  name, 
what's  happened?"  he  asked. 

Edith  had  known  all  along  that  she  would  have 
to  tell.  It  was  something  to  be  able  to  tell  it  be 
fore  her  sister-in-law  had  the  chance.  Her  lips 
parted  in  a  smile  that  was  partly  fearful,  partly 
defiant. 

"  I  was  worried,"  she  said,  "  about  what  happened 
between  you  and  Mr.  Tyrrell  last  night.  I  was 
afraid  you  might  antagonize  him,  so's  he  wouldn't 
put  his  money  into  the  sounder.  He  wouldn't  put 
it  in  if  nobody  smoothed  down  that  embarrassment 
of  last  night.  You'd  made  me  promise  not  to  see 
him,  so  I  'phoned. — Well,  perhaps  you'd  made  me 
promise  not  even  to  speak  to  him;  but  I  'phoned, 
anyhow.  I  simply  said  you  were  worried  by  busi 
ness-troubles,  by  not  being  able  to  get  the  money 
that  would  make  the  sounder  make  a  fortune 

Charley  swore  softly,  but  Edith  was  proceeding: 

"  Mame  heard  me.  She'd  been  hanging  around 
all  morning,  and  she  was  queer  last  night  when  she 
came  in  from  that  missionary-meeting,  too.  She'd 
gone  out  on  some  errand  this  morning;  but  she  got 
back  a  good  deal  quicker  than  was  natural.  I  think 
she  did  it  on  purpose;  I  think  she  hurried  back  and 
sneaked  in.  I  believe  she  listened.  She  never  liked 
me;  she  never  once  came  to  see  me  when  we  were 
downtown.  I  was  always  sure  she  was  spiteful  and 
jealous  of  my  place  in  this  house.  Anyhow,  she 
heard  just  enough  to  know  I  was  talking  to  Mr. 
Tyrrell,  and  then  it  turned  out  that,  last  night5, 
she'd  been  listening,  too,  the  way  I  guessed  she  had; 
and  she'd  heard  you  tell  me  not  to  see  him.  She  said 


306  JIM 

awful  things — horrid.  She  said  she  wouldn't  stay 
where  people  did  what  I'd  done — '  goings  on,'  she 
called  it — and  so  I  simply  told  her  I  was  your  wife 
and  I'd  stay  here  as  long  as  you  did,  whether  she 
liked  it  or  not.  Then  she  packed  some  of  her  clothes 
and  left." 

Charley  sank  upon  the  lounge  on  which  his  wife 
had  sunk  the  night  before.  He  put  his  face  in  his 
hands. 

"  Good  God!  "  he  groaned  again. 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  Edith.  "If  you 
think  more  of  your  sister " 

Charley's  voice,  which  came  through  his  fingers, 
interrupted  her. 

"  Now  I  know  what  was  wrong  with  Tyrrell  to 
day." 

"Wrong  with  him?  Was  there  something 
wrong?  "  All  of  Edith's  strength  rose  to  her  self- 
justification.  "  Then  it  wasn't  what  I  said  to  him 
to-day;  it  was  because  I  was  too  obedient  to  you  to 
say  more.  Whatever  was  wrong  was  wrong  be 
cause  you  behaved  the  way  you  did  last  night.  None 
of  it  would  have  happened  if  you  hadn't  suspected 
me  the  way  not  even  Jim — the  way  nobody  ever  sus 
pected  me  before.  What  was  wrong?" 

Charley  raised  a  face  that  was  haggard  with  fear. 
It  had  shrunken  lately,  and  now  the  skin  hung  loosely 
on  his  cheeks. 

"He's  pulled  out;  he's  refused  to  put  up " 

Edith's  eyes  dilated.    She  caught  her  breath. 

"  He  won't  give  you  the  money?  It  was  your 
fault !  " 

"  Not  a  single  cent." 


JIM  307 

"  But  why? — Don't  he  say  why?  Didn't  you  ask 
him?" 

"  I  didn't  see  him:  he  wrote.  He  didn't  give  any 

real  reason.  He  just  said Charley  fumbled  in 

a  breast-pocket.  He  produced  Tyrrell's  note,  soiled 
and  crumpled  now.  "  You  can  read  it  for  your 
self,"  he  concluded. 

She  snatched  it  from  him  and  read  it  at  a  glance. 
She  tossed  it  to  the  table: 

"  And  you  didn't  try  to  see  him?  " 

"  Anybody  can  tell  from  that  it'd  be  no  use.  So 
then- 

"  It  was  your  fault." 

"  Just  a  moment,  please." — He  would  go  through 
with  it  now:  it  would  be  a  relief  to  him  to  have 
somebody  share  this  crime  and  its  attendant  fear; 
it  would  even  be  a  grim  satisfaction  to  see  her  suf 
fer  a  little  of  what  he  suffered,  and  it  would  be 
only  common  justice  to  open  her  brown  eyes  to  the 
results  of  her  quarrel  with  Mame.  He  rushed  on: 
"  So  then  the  lawyers  began  'phoning.  There  was 

the  Stanfield  account  for  two  thousand,  and  the 

Oh,  I  forget  the  names  and  the  figures!"  He 
brushed  his  hand  across  his  aching  forehead.  "  It's 
about  five  times  more  than  I  ever  had  at  once,  any 
how.  And  they'd  have  entered  suit  to-morrow,  and 
that  would  have  ended  the  sounder  forever.  We'd 
have  been  down  and  out,  you  and  me.  Well,  there 
was  that  power-of-attorney  of  Mame's."  He  took 
a  great  breath. — "  I  used  it." 

Edith's  own  face  whitened.  She  drew  away  from 
him. 

"Will — will  they  find  it  out?"  she  whispered. 


308  JIM 

"  I    don't    know.      Here's    Mame    turned    en 


emy " 

'  That  wasn't  my  fault."  She  passionately  justi 
fied  herself.  u  You  know  it  wasn't  my  fault.  You 
oughtn't  ever  to  have  brought  me  here." 

"  What  else  could  I  do?  Anyhow,  it  doesn't  mat 
ter  whose  fault  it  was  in  the  beginning.  The  point 
is,  I've  used  her  money " 

"  Well,  if  she  didn't  mean  you  to  use  it,  why  did 
she  give  you  the  power-of-attorney?  " 

Charley  shook  his  head  wearily.  "  I  don't  know. 
I  asked  her." 

"  I  believe,"  began  Edith,  "  that  even  then  you 
thought " 

"  I  don't  know.  Perhaps  I  did.  But  now " 

He  stopped.  Back  in  his  brain,  in  the  depths  of 
his  memory,  cluttered  over  by  the  business-worries, 
the  jealousies,  and  the  debauches  of  the  past  weeks, 
something  rang  like  a  bell,  sharp  and  clear.  He 
rose.  He  looked  up,  his  eyes  staring  into  hers. 
'  Wasn't  it  you  suggested  me  getting  that  power-of- 
attorney  from  her?"  he  demanded.  "It  mas  you! 
Why  did  you  suggest  it?"  .  .  . 

For  a  long  moment  their  glances  met,  and  they 
probed  each  other's  souls.  There  was  no  word  said, 
but  there  passed  between  them  one  of  those  incan 
descent  flashes  of  understanding  which  are  so  rare 
between  even  the  happily  married.  In  that  flash,  as 
an  honest  man  and  wife  scarcely  ever  comprehend 
each  other,  Edith  comprehended  Charley  and  Char 
ley  comprehended  her.  By  doing  together  this  thing 
which  they  had  done,  by  acknowledging  it  to  each 
other  and  instinctively  expressing  their  willingness 


JIM  309 

to  go  on  with  it  together,  something  came  back, 
something  was  renewed,  however  temporarily:  they 
were  in  the  same  relative  positions  that  they  had 
been  in  on  that  night  when  they  definitely  began  their 
plot  against  Jim. 

Slowly  she  advanced  to  him;  slowly  she  put  her 
arms  around  his  neck,  slowly  raised  her  lips  to  his. 

''What  if  you  did  take  some  of  her  money?" 
whispered  Vanaman's  wife.  "  Your  father  wasn't 
himself  when  he  made  that  last  will;  he  was  half 
out  of  his  mind.  You  can  pay  her  back;  you  can 
pay  her  back  with  interest  some  day.  The  inven 
tion's  sure  to  make  money  for  her — we  both  know 
that.  If  you  hadn't  the  right  to  use  a  little  of  it 
that  way,  what  will  she  care  when  she  finds  it's  been 
a  good  investment  for  her?  What  does  it  matter 
so  long  as  she  doesn't  know  ?  She  needn't  ever  know. 
She  doesn't  suspect.  She's  not  angry  with  you. 
Don't  worry:  we'll  fix  her.  You  see  her,  and  then 
I  will,  too.  Go  and  see  her  to-morrow — give  me 
to-night,  but  go  and  see  her  to-morrow  morning, 
early.  Don't  bring  her  back,  but  smooth  her  down. 
You  can  do  anything  you  want  with  her.  You  know 
how  easy  she  is."  Edith  was  propelled  by  the  re 
vival  of  that  forgotten  bond  of  attraction.  Her 
arms  tightened;  she  held  him  close;  as  she  spoke, 
her  red  lips  brushed  his  lips.  "  The  money  was  half 
yours  by  right,  Charley — more  than  half.  What 
made  your  father  make  a  new  will?  Who  made 
him  make  it?  " 

§  2.  He  did  not  answer,  but  it  was,  for  this  hour, 
as  it  had  been  with  them  both  on  that  morning 


310  JIM 

before  the  news  of  the  granting  of  the  divorce  came 
to  them;  as  their  league  against  Jim  had  then  brought 
them  together,  so  their  league  against  Mame — the 
result,  as  it  seemed  to  them,  of  the  will  to  plot 
together  that  was  born  when  they  conspired  against 
Jim — brought  them  together  now.  Fear  fell  from 
them,  and  within  them  rose,  beating  at  their  tem 
ples  and  straining  at  their  throats,  the  passion  which 
was,  after  all,  the  purest  emotion  that  they  had  in 
common.  They  were  one  again :  guilt  had  once  more 
done  for  them  what  marriage  could  not  do. 


NINETEENTH  CHAPTER 

DOUBT  came  at  the  time  when  it  usually  ar 
rives:  in  the  morning.  Edith  and  Charley 
woke  with  headaches,  for  they  had  drunk 
a  good  deal  during  the  night,  and  showed  it. 

Edith,  through  half-opened  eyes,  saw  that  her 
husband,  as  he  stood  before  the  shaving  mirror, 
looked  worn  and  vulgar.  His  skin  was  dull;  his 
prominent  eyes  were  bloodshot — as,  indeed,  '  they 
now  usually  were, — and  his  hair,  daily  growing 
thinner  and  more  brittle,  showed  touches  of  gray. 
The  rough  stubble  on  his  loose  cheeks  looked  like 
grime,  and,  as  he  now  sought  to  remove  it,  he  more 
than  once  cut  himself  with  his  trembling  razor. 

Nor  was  Charley's  vision  of  his  wife  more  edify 
ing.  To  the  end,  Edith  was  always  able  to  simulate 
her  earlier  beauty  when  she  had  time  to  prepare  the 
simulation;  but,  under  the  cruel  light  of  the  morn 
ing,  she  showed  plainly  her  seniority.  It  flashed 
through  Vanaman's  mind  that  the  best  of  her  was 
what  had  been  Jim's,  and  he  hated  Jim  the  more  be 
cause  of  this. 

"  Suppose  she  don't  let  me  jolly  her,"  said  Char 
ley — "  Mame,  I  mean." 

"  She  will,"  yawned  Edith.  She  did  not  want  to 
think  of  unpleasant  things;  she  wanted  to  go  to  sleep 
again.  "  Bring  her  back  if  you  must." 

"  But  suppose  I  can't  fix  it,"  Charley  persisted. 

"  Then  it  will  be  your  fault,"  said  his  wife.  She 
311 


312  JIM 

yawned  again;  but  she  would  have  to  think  of  the 
unpleasant  things:  she  realized  that  now. 

"  Aren't  you  going  to  get  up?  "  asked  Vanaman. 

"  No,"  said  Edith. 

"  But  what  am  I  going  to  do  about  breakfast?  " 

"What  am  /  going  to  do,  Charley?  I  suppose 
you  can  get  a  cup  of  coffee  on  your  way  over  to  Mrs. 
Hamilton's.  But  don't  tell  Mame  you  didn't  have 
one  here :  that'd  only  please  her." 

Charley  cut  himself  again  and  cried  out.  Never 
theless,  he  did  not  then  upbraid  his  wife  for  sloth- 
fulness;  she  was  an  important  ally,  and  allies  were 
few.  There  was  a  silence,  during  which  each  was 
thinking  of  how  much  hung  upon  the  outcome  of 
the  projected  visit:  Charley  that  perhaps  his  very 
liberty  depended  upon  his  bringing  Mame  back  and 
restoring  his  own  influence  over  her  before  Zoller's 
could  reassert  itself;  Edith  that  between  her  and 
absolute  ruin  there  stood  only  this  figure  of  the  vapid 
sister-in-law  whom  she  had  always  despised.  Pres 
ently  Edith,  who  had  shut  her  eyes  again,  resumed: 

"  If  she  doesn't  let  herself  be  smoothed  down, 
that's  no  reason  why  she  should  suspect  you ;  but 
if  she  does  suspect  you,  perhaps  we  can  still  bring 
Mr.  Tyrrell  around." 

It  was  what  had  been  in  Charley's  mind.  He  did 
not  like  to  hear  his  wife  suggest  it,  but  he  had  been 
about  to  suggest  it  himself.  Neither  believed  the 
excuse  that  Tyrrell  had  offered;  both  knew  that  they 
were  not  expected  to  believe  it. 

'  Yes,"  said  Charley,  "  perhaps  we'd  better  try. 
If  things  don't  go  right  with  Mame,  we'll  talk  it 
over  when  I  come  home  this  evening. 


JIM  313 

As  he  bent  over  the  bed  to  kiss  her  good-by,  he 
thought  that  he  had  never  seen  her  look  so  old  and 
unattractive.  He  was  about  to  put  their  fortunes 
to  the  test;  this  should  have  been  a  farewell  into 
which  she  poured  encouragement,  into  which  she 
poured  something  of  the  ardor  that  had  brought 
them  together  on  the  previous  night:  she  looked  at 
him  through  half-opened  eyes  and  saw  in  him  only 
the  broken  and  empty  shell  of  a  man.  It  had  all 
left  her:  that  ardor  of  the  night;  she  could  not  give 
him  her  mouth;  she  turned  her  cheek.  It  had  left 
him,  too :  he  was  relieved  that  she  did  not  give  him 
her  mouth. 

§  2.  Mame's  friend,  Mrs.  Hamilton,  lived  in  an 
apartment-house  on  a  cross-street,  less  than  half  a 
mile  from  the  Vanamans'.  It  was  one  of  those 
apartment-houses  which  the  New  Yorker  loves:  the 
sort  that  put  their  best  front  to  the  world  and  im 
press  the  street  at  whatever  cost  to  the  inmates.  The 
front  was  ornate  and  costly;  the  carefully  gloomed 
lobby  less  expensively  mimicked  a  sober  wealth — and 
the  apartments  frankly  paid  the  bills. 

When  Charley  had  passed  through  a  fragile 
elevator-cage  on  the  third-story  and  rung  at  a  thin 
pine-door,  he  was  shown  down  a  dark  hallway  so 
narrow  that  he  could  not  spread  his  arms  in  it.  At 
the  end  of  this,  he  was  left  to  wait  for  his  sister  in  a 
little,  five-sided  room.  This  was  the  parlor  of  the 
flat,  and  it  appeared  to  provide  the  lessee  with  a 
game  like  "  Pigs-in-Clover,"  of  which  the  object  was 
to  maneuver  the  installment-plan  furniture  of  an 
ordinary  parlor  into  the  room  without  spilling  any 


3i4  JIM 

pieces  out  of  the  window.  The  present  lessee  had 
won  the  game. 

Charley  sat  down  in  a  chair  of  imitation 
mahogany,  Chippendale  from  Grand  Rapids.  It 
audibly  protested,  but  it  could  bear  him  now,  for, 
from  all  over  his  body,  the  fat  had  lately  been  dis 
appearing,  leaving  the  skin  hanging  like  the  silk  of 
a  half-inflated  balloon.  He  was  close  to  panic.  As 
he  sat  there,  the  fear  came  to  him  that  perhaps  she 
had  already  run  to  Zoller  and  that  Zoller  had  ques 
tioned  her  and  learned  enough  to  suspect  the  truth. 
The  visitor  cursed  his  delay.  What  a  fool  he  had 
been  to  listen  to  Edith  and  let  the  night  pass  with 
out  intervention !  When  Mame  came  in,  he  got  up 
and  kissed  her  quickly. 

"Oh,  Charley!"  she  said. 

She  wore  a  cotton  dressing-gown,  and  her  hair 
was  in  curl-papers.  Her  vague  eyes  were  red  from 
weeping,  and  she  spoke  in  the  tone  she  used  to 
employ  at  her  father's  bedside. 

Her  brother  attempted  another  sort  of  tone.  He 
tried  to  be  jocular  and  superior  and  to  make  light 
of  her  presence  here.  "  Now,  then,"  he  said,  "  what 
have  you  children  been  quarreling  about?  Wouldn't 
Edith  give  you  any  of  her  gumdrops?  " 

Mame  looked  at  him  in  a  sort  of  ruminant  protest. 

"  Oh,  Charley,"  she  said,  "  how  can  you?  "  And 
then  she  added:  "Isn't  it  awful?  My  own  sister- 
in-law!" 

He  was  quaking  with  fear,  but  he  fought  to  hold 
his  pose.  It  was  something  that  Mame,  as  her  man 
ner  indicated,  as  yet  guessed  nothing  of  his  own 
course;  but  this  did  not  prove  that  she  had  not  been 


JIM  315 

to  Zoller:  Zoller  might  well,  after  questioning  her, 
leave  her  in  the  dark  until  he  had  verified  whatever 
suspicions  he  had  gathered  from  the  full  answers 
she  would  have  given  him.  But  Charley  chuckled. 

"  Tut-tut !  "  he  said.  "  The  thing  I  think's  awful 
is  your  not  coming  right  to  me  instead  of  running 
off  here  to  people  outside  your  own  family  like  Mrs. 
Hamilton  and  Mr.  Zoller." 

Mame's  face  showed  a  new  light. 

"  Why,  I  never  thought  of  Mr.  Zoller,"  she  said. 
u  If  there's  got  to  be  any  legal  arrangement  about 
the  house,  perhaps  it  would  have  been  better 

'Just  a  moment,  please!"  Charley  could  have 
torn  his  tongue  out:  he  had  actually  put  the  idea 
into  her  silly  head.  "  There's  no  reason  for  your 
going  to  anybody  but  me :  there's  every  reason  why 
you  shouldn't.  You  know  I  don't  trust  Zoller." 

"  Poppa  did." 

"Well,  no  matter  if  he  did:  you  don't  want  to 
make  a  scandal,  do  you?  You  don't  want  to  get 
any  lawyers  in  this." 

"  No,"  said  Mame,  "  I  don't  want  to  make  things 
worse  than  they  have  to  be;  but  I  wouldn't  go  to 
Mr.  Zoller  because  he  was  a  lawyer:  I'd  go  to  him 
because  he  was  a  friend  and  a  man  and  knew  the 
law." 

The  distinction  was  too  fine  for  Charley. 

"  I  tell  you,  you  don't  need  anybody  that  knows 
the  law.  What's  the  law  got  to  do  with  it?  " 

"  I  only  thought  there  might  be  some  sort  of  legal 
arrangement " 

Did  she  mean  to  give  him  money  enough  to  live 
away  from  her?  Twenty-four  hours  ago  he  would 


316  JIM 

have  kissed  her  for  the  offer;  to-day,  he  knew  that 
he  must  keep  her  under  his  influence  and  that  he 
must  prevent  any  arrangement  of  her  affairs  and 
his  which  would  involve  a  careful  scrutiny  of  their 
entire  field. 

"I  don't  want  any  arrangement,"  he  said:  "I 
want  you." 

Grateful  tears  came  to  her  eyes.  She  timidly  took 
his  hand. 

'  That's  good  of  you,  Charley.  Somehow,  I'd 
begun  to  think  you  didn't  care  any  more." 

"  Of  course  I  care."  He  patted  her  shoulder  pro- 
tectingly.  "You  say  you  need  a  friend:  well,  I'm 
better  than  a  friend — I'm  your  brother." 

"  I  know,"  she  answered,  "  but  you're  Edith's 
husband,  too;  and  you  remember  what  the  Bible 
says :  '  For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  father  and 
mother,  and  shall  cleave  to  his  wife.'  I  was  read 
ing  that  last  night." 

"  But  you  see  I'm  going  to  cleave  to  Edith  and 
you,  too,"  said  Charley.  "  It's  all  right.  You  just 
misunderstood  each  other,  that's  all.  Now,  you  get 
your  things  together  and  come  right  back  with  me, 
and  we'll  explain  everything,  and  everything'll  be 
the  way  it  was  before." 

Again  the  tears  filled  Mame's  eyes,  but  she  shook 
her  head. 

"  No,  Charley,"  she  said.  "  I  can't  go  back  while 
Edith's  there:  I'm  sorry,  but  I  can't." 

What  was  the  matter  with  Mame?  What  had 
changed  her  of  late  from  the  sister  upon  whom  he 
could  always  work  his  will? 

"  Mame,"  he  said,  "  I'm  ashamed  of  you." 


JIM  317 

'  Then,"  said  Mame,  "  you  don't  know  what  hap 
pened,  and  I  don't  know  if  I've  any  right  to  tell 
you." 

Had  Edith  lied  to  him?  Had  she  concealed  some 
thing?  Had  she  been  saying  more  to  Tyrrell  than 
she  pretended  to  have  said?  Then  why  had  she 
urged  him  to  come  here?  Didn't  she  know  Mame 
would  repeat  it?  Or  did  she  safely  count  on  his 
sister's  sense  of  duty,  which  forbade  her  to  make 
trouble  between  husband  and  wife?  This  whole 
difficulty  was  of  Edith's  making:  she  had  disobeyed 
him;  she  broke  her  promise,  she  telephoned  sur 
reptitiously  to  Tyrrell  just  as,  when  Jim's  wife,  she 
used  telephone  to  Charley.  For  the  minute,  he 
forgot  his  danger. 

"  What  was  it?  "  he  asked. 
"  I  don't  know  if  I  ought  to  tell." 
"  You  oughtn't  to  do  anything  but  tell." 
He  got  it  out  of  her:  it  was  nothing  more  than 
Edith  had  owned  to.     Then  he  had  the  difficulty 
of   explaining  that  Edith  had   admitted  this;   that 
it  was  of  no  importance;  that  he  forgave  his  wife 
for  conduct  toward  Tyrrell  which  was  essentially 
incorrect,  and  that,  Edith  being  sorry  for  what  she 
had  said  to  Mame,  Mame  must  forgive  her,  too. 

"  If  things  don't  go  right  with  Mame—  "  he  had 
said  to  his  wife :  things  did  not  go  tremendously  right 
with  Mame.  She  was  amazingly  fixed.  Charley's 
future  was  balked,  his  liberty  endangered,  by  her 
new-born  stubbornness,  her  twisted  sense  of  duty 
to  herself,  and  the  hundred  petty  details  of  a  long 
standing  animosity  between  a  sister  and  her  sister- 
in-law. 


318  JIM 

Mame  wept  a  good  deal,  but  her  tears  were  no 
longer  soft.  Edith,  according  to  her,  had  been  quite 
as  ready  with  criticism  as  Mame  had  been  in  Edith's 
version  of  their  earlier  differences  and  final  quarrel. 
His  sister,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  peace,  could  not 
live  again  with  Edith. 

"  I  thought  you  were  a  religious  woman,"  Char 
ley  sadly  upbraided  her. 

That  was,  Mame  protested,  precisely  her  point. 
The  religious  soul  has  two  duties:  one  to  its  neigh 
bor  and  the  other  to  itself;  it  must  have  charity  and 
it  must  have  self-respect.  Mame,  though  as  a  Chris 
tian  she  forgave,  could  not,  as  a  self-respecting 
woman,  forget.  In  the  former  character,  she  told 
her  brother  that  she  could  share  belief  in  Edith's  re 
pentance,  though  she  thought  the  repentance  only 
temporary;  in  the  latter,  she  declared  that  she  could 
subject  herself  to  no  further  insult  and  that,  since 
he  demanded  the  truth,  her  brother's  wife  was,  in 
her  opinion,  a  spouse  that  he  had  better  separate 
from  at  once  if  he  did  not  want  soon  to  have  to  di 
vorce  her. 

Charley's  patience  left  him.  He  had  been  ready 
enough  to  suspect  Edith  and  to  accuse  her  in  the 
privacy  of  their  own  life,  but  his  frayed  nerves  re 
acted  against  these  accusations  by  a  third  person. 
Moreover,  he  did  not  forget  that  the  present  accuser, 
if  his  sister,  was  also  the  actual  inheritor  of  money 
he  believed  by  right  to  be  his. 

He  accordingly  lost  his  temper,  and  there  were 
more  tears  and  a  scene,  in  the  course  of  which  Mame 
declared  that,  since  her  only  living  relative  hated 
her,  she  would  cut  the  last  strand  that  bound  them 


JIM  319 

and  turn  the  management  of  her  estate  over  to  her 
father's  lawyer.  It  took  a  good  deal  of  tact,  of 
which  Charley  in  his  best  moments  had  no  large 
supply,  to  turn  the  conversation  away  from  such  un- 
sisterly  threats,  and  he  left  Mame  only  partially 
pacified.  The  best  that  he  could  get  from  her,  even 
by  appeals  to  religion  and  family  affection,  was  a 
promise  to  "  think  things  over." 

§  3.    He  went  hopelessly  to  his  hopeless  office  and 
passed    there    a    worried   day.      He    telephoned   to 
Edith  the  result  of  his  interview  with  Mame. 
'  You've  certainly  got  me  into  it,"  he  concluded. 

"  I  told  you  last  night  it  was  your  own  fault," 
she  answered:  "  you  oughtn't  ever  to  have  made  me 
live  with  her." 

"  And  I  told  you  there  wasn't  anything  else  I 
could  do." 

"  Well,  what  are  you  going  to  do  now?  That's 
the  important  thing." 

He  said  he  thought  he  would  have  to  await 
Mame's  decision  and  might  meanwhile  try  to  obtain 
an  interview  with  Tyrrell. 

From  the  latter  course  Edith  dissuaded  him.  She 
said  it  would  look  as  if  he  were  too  anxious. 

"  Give  him  another  day  to  think  it  over  in,"  she 
advised.  "  To-night,  if  you  think  it's  any  use,  I'll 
go  around  with  you  to  see  Mame." 

"  But  she  might  go  to  Zoller  in  the  meantime," 
said  Charley. 

"  No,  she  won't.  You  know  she  never  hurries. 
She  told  you  she'd  think  it  over,  and  Mame  thinks 
slow." 


320  JIM 

"  I  wonder,"  Charley  added,  "  why  Zoller  never 
mixed  in  before.  He  drew  the  will,  and  she  had  to 
tell  him  a  few  things  when  she  turned  the  estate 
over  to  me.  I've  always  wondered  about  that,  but 
I  was  afraid  I'd  only  start  her  to  hunting  trouble 
if  I  asked  her." 

Over  the  wire,  Edith's  voice  came  more  lightly: 
'  That's  where  I  did  you  a  good  turn,  anyhow. 
Mame  and  I  were  friends  then.  I  said  if  she  told 
Zoller  that,  he'd  try  to  take  the  thing  out  of  your 
hands  because  he  didn't  like  you;  and  I  said  you 
needed  the  fees." 

"  If  she  remembers  that,  it  might  send  her  to 
him  now!  " 

"  Oh,  she'll  never  go  to  law,  no  matter  what  she 
finds  out." 

"  Zoller'd  make  her,"  said  Charley;  "she  always 
does  what  the  person  nearest  to  her  tells  her  to." 

He  rang  off.  He  took  the  power-of-attorney  from 
the  desk  and,  drinking  as  he  read,  perused  it  even 
more  carefully  than  on  the  previous  afternoon. 
There  was  no  misunderstanding  its  phraseology:  it 
gave  him  the  right  to  check-out  Mame's  money  only 
for  the  running  expenses  of  the  Vanaman  estate; 
Leishman  had  drawn  it  as  directed,  but  Edith  had 
apparently  feared  to  ask  Mame  for  any  wider 
powers. 

Charley  drank  steadily  throughout  the  morning. 
Nearly  all  of  this  money  might  have  been  legally 
his.  It  was  even  possible  Mame  had  indeed  in 
fluenced  his  father  against  him:  Mame  was  a  little 
too  good  to  be  true.  Besides,  the  sounder  was  bound 
to  repay,  and  Tyrrell  might  still  be  brought  'round. 


JIM  321 

Charley  would  give  the  sounder  a  full  chance.  On 
the  old  theory  that  it  is  as  well  to  hang— if  de 
tected — for  a  sheep  as  a  lamb,  he  boldly  drew  an 
other  and  larger  check  against  Mame's  fortune  and, 
in  the  face  of  all  danger,  proceeded  to  put  forth  his 
invention  on  what,  forgetting  that  the  money  was 
his  sister's  involuntary  contribution,  he  described  as 
his  own  hook. 

§4.  Almost  at  that  instant,  Edith  was  using  her 
own  hook,  too.  She  had  been  left  alone  in  the  hide 
ous  house  of  which  every  room  reminded  her  of  her 
failures.  She  saw  Charley  ruined  and  herself  re 
duced  to  imploring  the  charity  of  Uncle  Gregory 
or  returning,  if  it  was  permitted  her,  to  the  monot 
ony  of  Ayton.  This  was  what  Jim  had  brought  her 
to.  She  remembered  the  dreams  of  her  girlhood 
and  she  cried  over  them.  She  had  not  wanted  more 
than  other  women — she  was  sure  of  that — and  she 
had  once  loved  Charley  truly  and  wholly.  Now  she 
must  pay. 

There  must  be  some  way  out.  She  remembered 
Tyrrell :  it  all  would  have  been  well  if  Mame  had 
not  interrupted  that  explanation  to  Tyrrell;  Edith's 
misfortune  had  not  been  in  telephoning  him,  but  in 
not  being  permitted  to  finish  telephoning.  If  she 
could  have  made  an  appointment  with  him  and  seen 
him  face  to  face,  she  would  have  saved  the  situation. 

Well,  Charley  had  agreed  that  it  might  still  be 
both  necessary  and  possible  to  bring  Bob  Tyrrell 
around.  That  was  what  he  agreed  before  he  left 
to  persuade  Mame.  Edith  would  try  it  now;  she 
would  complete— it  was  not  too  late — what  marplot 


322  JIM 

Mame  had  interrupted  yesterday.  When  Charley 
telephoned,  Edith  persuaded  him  against  appealing 
to  Tyrrell.  Once  before  he  had  failed  with  Tyrrell : 
now  she  would  succeed. 

Her  telephone  caught  the  Bostonian  at  his  club. 

"  I  want  to  see  you,"  she  said.  "  I  want  you 
please  to  take  me  to  lunch  somewhere." 

Tyrrell  agreed,  and  it  was  good  to  hear  his  voice. 
She  had  not  realized  how  good  it  would  be. 

Edith  made  a  careful  toilette.  She  wore  her  best 
gown,  and  she  took  pains  about  the  crayon  and 
rouge.  She  did  not  want  their  work  to  be  evident 
as  theirs,  but  she  wanted  to  look  her  best.  .  .  . 

§  5.  He  had  named  a  quiet  restaurant,  but  an  ex 
pensive  one.  As  Edith  entered  it,  she  felt  the  wisdom 
of  his  choice;  but,  when  she  was  seated  opposite 
her  pleasant  host,  she  was  startled  to  see,  at  tables 
near  her,  two  faces  with  which  she  had  once  been 
familiar.  She  did  not  know  what  hurt  her  more: 
the  cold  stare  with  which  her  bow  of  recognition  was 
met  by  that  Muriel  Carson  whom  she  had  liked  and 
respected  during  her  life  with  Jim  and  had  not  seen 
since  the  divorce ;  or  the  waved  hand  of  Effie  Mitch 
ell,  who,  with  her  cheeks  painted  red  and  her  nose 
powdered  violet,  greeted  Edith  across  the  room  as 
comrade  hails  comrade.  Edith  could  scarcely  eat 
until  Muriel,  with  a  man  who  must  have  been  her 
father,  and  Effie  with  a  youth  who  might  have  been 
her  son,  left  the  restaurant. 

It  was  wonderful  to  look  from  them  to  Tyrrell, 
sitting  opposite,  polite,  decorous,  easy,  wrapped  in 


JIM  323 

the  golden  light  from  the  happy  doorway  that  was 
forbidden  her.  She  looked  at  him  from  a  glass  that 
had  been  oftener  refilled  than  had  her  glass  at  any 
of  their  other  meetings.  It  was  long  before,  look 
ing  at  him,  she  could  bring  herself  to  think  of  the 
sordid  motives  that,  she  still  told  herself,  had 
prompted  her  to  ask  him  to  bring  her  here. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  must  think  of  us,"  she 
said,  when  she  finally  decided  that  the  moment  to 
speak  of  such  things  could  no  longer  be  postponed. 
;<  Why  '  us ' ?  "  he  asked,  his  glance  full  upon  hers. 
Her  eyes  lighted  with  the  old  feeling  of  conquest 
to  be  gained,  but  she  had  the  grace  to  let  them 
drop. 

"  Why  not?  "  was  all  she  had  to  say. 
They  had  finished  a  luncheon  chosen  with  the  care 
and  delicacy  that  such  a  luncheon  deserved,  and,  over 
their  cordial  glasses,  were  delaying  departure. 
About  them,  the  chatter  at  the  other  tables,  the  noise 
of  dishes  and  the  brass  of  an  orchestra  in  a  balcony 
almost  over  their  heads,  made  Edith  forget  the  in 
sult  of  Muriel  Carson's  snub  and  Effie  Mitchell's 
greeting.  She  felt  that  now  she  and  this  handsome 
host  were  as  unnoticed  as  two  children  at  a  circus. 
If  one  can  hide  by  night  in  a  large  city,  he  can 
generally  hide  by  noon  in  a  great  restaurant,  and 
Tyrrell  and  Edith,  though  they  did  not  consider  the 
necessity  of  being  hidden  save  from  the  possible 
jealous  gaze  of  Vanaman,  were  at  last  temporarily 
secure  from  the  interruptions  of  their  own  world. 
Sitting  at  their  ease,  they  put  aside  their  smiles  and 
lighter  talk  and  drifted,  as  they  used  to  when  alone, 
to  something  personal  if  not  intimate. 


324  JIM 

"  I  wonder,"  said  Tyrrell,  slowly,  "  if  you  know 
what  a  beautiful  woman  you  are?  " 

There  was  perfect  sincerity  in  his  voice,  and  Edith, 
after  her  elaborate  preparations,  was,  indeed,  look 
ing  her  best;  but  she  knew  the  ground  to  be  dan 
gerous.  Besides,  they  had  somehow  not  yet  talked 
of  what  she  had  told  herself  she  came  here  to  talk 
about. 

"  Don't,"  she  said  and  without  coquetry.  "  I'm 
glad  you  think  so;  but — is  that  all?" 

She  was  searching  her  soul.  Somehow  she  won 
dered  how  much  beauty  counted;  how  much  it 
brought  her,  and  how  much  it  might  yet  bring.  She 
thought  of  Charley — with  no  feeling  of  disloyalty; 
indeed,  with  little  feeling  at  all — of  Mame,  of  her 
dreary  life  in  the  old-fashioned  Vanaman  home, 
where  her  presence  had  been  so  obviously  tolerated 
only  because  of  Charley's  relations  to  her.  She 
thought  of  what  now  threatened  that  house  and  her 
self  as  one  of  its  inmates.  She  hated  her  whole 
drab  past  and  feared  her  whole  dark  future;  she 
made  a  movement  as  if  her  shackles  were  material 
things  and  she  could  shake  them  from  her  wrists. 

What  Tyrrell  saw  was  a  pretty  gesture  of  in 
quiry  from  a  beautiful  woman. 

"  All?  "  he  repeated.  "  No.  You  are  a  very  brave 
and  fine  woman,  too." 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  said,  honestly.  "  I  try  to  be 
brave — but  it's  hard  sometimes,  isn't  it?" 

"  It  is  hard,"  he  answered.  "  I  think  we  all 
try. — It  must  be  wretched  for  you  in  that  dismal 
house." 

"  You  do  think  it  dismal,  don't  you  ?  "    How  could 


JIM  325 

he  think  it  anything  else,  this  easy-mannered  man 
of  the  world  whose  grave  eyes  so  earnestly  studied 
her? 

"  Good  Heavens !  "  said  Tyrrell.  "  Surely  no  one 
ever  called  it  gay!  " 

They  both  laughed.    Then  Edith  continued: 

"  I  think  Mame  does — or  used  to." 

'  You  mean  the  dumpy I  beg  your  pardon — 

the- 

But  Edith  did  not  object. 

"  That's  just  it,"  she  agreed.  "  And  her  mind's 
somehow  dumpy,  too."  She  did  not  think  it  nec 
essary  to  say  that  Mame  was  no  longer  an  inmate 
of  the  prison. 

'  You  don't  belong  there,"  he  said  at  length. 

"Where  do  I  belong?" 

"  Well,  you  belong — here — everywhere  where  it 
is  bright  and  happy  and  merry — 

Edith  had  been  listening  with  flushed  face.  Her 
dreams  called  her;  the  door  of  light  called  her;  the 
thought  that  Jim  had  gained  what  she  so  wanted 
urged  her  on. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "Not  that  I  want  it  always; 
but  once  in  a  while  I  do  belong  where  there's  music 
and  dancing — where  people  dress  well  and  live  well 
and  enjoy  life.  I've  always  wanted  those  things, 
and  somehow  I've  always  just  missed  them." 

There  were  unshed  tears  in  her  brown  eyes. 

"  I  think  I  understand,"  said  Tyrrell,  quietly; 
"  and  I  think  you'll  understand  me  if  I  say  it's 
hard  luck." 

Edith  fought  back  her  tears.     She  smiled. 

"  Oh,  it  will  come!  "  she  said.    "  I  know  it  will  " 


326  JIM 

— she  recalled  her  errand  here — "  if  Charley  ever 
gets  his  sounder  through,  and  can  give  a  little  time 
to  me  instead  of  to  his  invention!"  She  lowered 
her  eyes.  "  It's  that  I  wanted  to  talk  to  you  about," 
she  went  on.  "  Charley " 

She  stopped:  Tyrrell  was  regarding  her  with  a 
puzzled  smile. 

"  I  think,"  he  said,  "  that,  if  we  are  going  to  dis 
cuss  jealousy,  /  might  be  jealous  of  him." 

Edith's  glance  intensified.  She  remembered  how 
she  and  this  man  had  danced  together,  been  one  be 
ing  and  moved  with  one  rhythm  to  music  and  joy. 
Her  starved  heart  suddenly  cried  out  in  protest 
against  life  and  in  longing  for  a  little  joy.  If  only 
she  had  met  Tyrrell  sooner.  If  only 

But  Charley's  invention  was  what  she  must  now 
think  of,  and  she  brought  herself  to  it. 

"  I'm  sorry  he  acted  the  way  he  did — Charley, 
I  mean,"  she  said.  "  I  shouldn't  have  telephoned 
to  you  yesterday.  I  only  wanted  to  tell  you — to 
explain — to  say  he  was  so  excited,  and  we  all  know 
how  important  it  is  to  get  his  invention  on  the  mar 
ket  quickly.  Everything  upsets  him  now,  while  he's 
only  waiting,  more  than  it  should." 

Tyrrell  ignored,  as  completely  as  Edith,  the  ex 
cuse  that  he  had  sent  Charley  for  the  withdrawal 
of  support. 

"  I  think  the  sounder  is  a  good  thing,  Mrs.  Vana- 
man,"  he  said.  "  I've  looked  it  over  pretty  thor 
oughly.  I  suppose  it  is  hard  to  find  people  to  put 
up  capital  on  chance 

"  It  is  a  good  investment,"  said  Edith. 

"  Yes,  it's  a  good  investment.    I  tell  you  honestly, 


JIM  327 

I  would  have  gone  into  it  if  your  husband  hadn't 
been " 

"  I  know,"  said  Edith,  softly.  "  But  I  believe  he's 
over  that:  really  I  do.  Of  course  it  must  have 
looked  a  little  queer  to  him,  to  come  into  the  room 
and  find  you  holding  my  hand,  even  if  " — she  smiled 
at  memory  of  their  innocent  lie — "  even  if  you  were 
only  telling  my  fortune." 

Her  cheeks  were  warm  with  color.  Tyrrell 
caught  her  glance  and  held  it,  but  the  waiter,  grow 
ing  impatient,  was  demanding: 

"  Anything  more,  sir?  " 

"  No,"  said  Tyrrell,  sharply.  "  Bring  me  my 
bill." 

Edith  sighed.  Did  he  mean  this  as  a  final 
refusal? 

"  Don't  you  think,"  asked  her  host,  "  that  we'd 
better  finish  our  talk  at  another  luncheon — soon?" 

"Isn't  it  finished?" 

"  Do  you  think  it  is?  " 

"I  don't  know;  I "  He  had  given  her  no 

answer;  he  had  left  everything  in  the  air — she  must 
know — she  must  know! 

"  Well,  then,  we  might  continue  it,  at  any  rate," 
said  Tyrrell,  "  some  day  next  week.  Say  Tuesday." 

"  You  might  telephone,  of  course,"  suggested 
Edith. 

»  Yes,  but " 

"  Oh,  it's  perfectly  safe  at  eleven  in  the  morning." 
— She  would  not  pretend  to  misunderstand  him  now. 
— "  I'm  always  alone  then.  Besides,  you  needn't  say 
who  you  are." 

41  Well— Tuesday." 


328  JIM 

"  Perhaps."  She  made  a  final  effort.  "  But  about 
— about  the  invention?  " 

Tyrrell's  face  was  undecided. 

"  You  know  how  I  feel,"  he  said. 

"  Yes,"  agreed  Edith,  with  an  upward  glance, 
"  but  if  it's  a  good  thing " 

"  I'll  see,"  he  concluded.  He  looked  at  her 
squarely.  "  I'll  see,"  he  repeated. 

There  were  some  things  that  he  did  not  like  to 
put  plainly,  even  to  himself. 


TWENTIETH  CHAPTER 

A}  soon,  that  evening,  as  Charley's  latch-key 
sounded  in  the  door  of  the  Vanaman  house, 
Edith  hurried  into  the  vestibule  to  meet  him. 
He  had  left  his  office  somewhat  earlier  than  usual 
because,  after  the  strain  of  the  second  robbery  of 
Mame's  estate,  he  had  felt  the  need  of  a  further 
stimulant,  and  the  supply  in  his  desk  he  had  ex 
hausted  by  mid-afternoon.  He  had  remained  down 
town  drinking  until  the  hour  at  which  he  cus 
tomarily  returned  home;  but  he  was  not  drunk:  in 
the  present  state  of  his  nerves,  a  good  deal  of  liquor 
was  required  to  conquer  him.  He  was,  rather,  more 
than  commonly  susceptible  to  impressions,  and  he 
now  at  once  saw  by  his  wife's  face  that  something  had 
gone  wrong. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  demanded. 

Edith  closed  the  door  of  the  vestibule  behind  her. 

"Where  on  earth  have  you  been?"  she  whis 
pered. 

"  At  my  office.    Where'd  you  suppose?  " 

"  Well,  you  weren't  there  about  half  an  hour  ago. 
Somebody  went  to  see  you,  and  you  weren't  there. 
The  people  in  the  next  office  said  they  thought  you'd 
gone  home.  So  he  came  up  here.  He's  here  now. 
He  just  came  in.  He's  in  the  parlor." 

Her  voice  shook.     It  frightened  Vanaman. 

"What  are  you  talking  about?"  he  asked. 
"Who's  here?" 

329 


330  JIM 

"  Mr.  Zoller." 

"  Zoller?  "  Charley  stupidly  repeated.  "  Mame's 
lawyer?  What  does  he  want?" 

"  I  don't  know.  I  told  you  he's  only  just  got  here. 
I  can't  guess.  He  won't  say  anything  to  me,  and 
I  don't  dare  ask. — I  thought  you  told  me  Mame 
wouldn't  do  anything  till  she'd  mulled  it  all  over 
in  her  own  mind." 

"  That's  what  she  promised,"  said  Charley.  He 
leaned  against  the  wall  of  the  vestibule,  panting. 
"  Oh,  Lord !  "  he  said. 

Edith  dragged  at  his  hand. 

"  You  can't  stay  here,"  she  urged.  "  You've  got 
to  go  in.  The  longer  we  wait,  the  queerer  it  will 
look  to  him." 

Charley  passed  a  trembling  hand  across  his  eyes. 

"  I  can't  go  in,"  he  muttered. 

But  Edith  dragged  at  him. 
'  You  must.    You've  got  to.    Come  on.    Do  you 
want  to  ruin  us?     Come  on  into  the  dining-room 
first  and  have  a  drink  to  steady  your  nerves." 

He  struggled.  "You'll  go  along?  You'll  back 
me  up?  "  He  was  pitiful. 

This,  she  bitterly  reflected,  was  the  man  she  had 
to  count  on:  this  was  what  Jim  had  left  her.  Well, 
somehow  she  must  pull  him  through. 

"Yes,  yes,"  she  said;  "I'll  come  along;  I'll  back 
you  up.  Only,  hurry,  hurry!  " 

She  led  him  softly  into  the  dining-room.  She 
poured  him  a  large  drink,  and  herself  one,  the  bottle 
clanging  nervously  against  the  glass  as  she  poured. 

"  Come  on  now,"  she  said.  "  And  just  remember 
not  to  admit  anything — anything!  " 


JIM  331 

He  stood  with  the  empty  glass  in  his  hand,  look 
ing  at  her.  Suddenly  he  collapsed  into  a  seat  and 
bent  his  head  to  the  dining-table. 

She  ran  to  him  and  tried  to  lift  his  head;  but  he 
held  it  down. 

"  Come  on!  "  she  whispered. 

11 1  can't,"  he  groaned.  ..."  I'm  afraid." 

Edith  pulled  at  his  shoulders.  She  ground  her 
teeth.  He  would  not  budge. 

"  You  coward!  "  she  said. 

"  Oh,  it's  easy  enough  for  you  to  talk,"  said  her 
husband:  "  you  get  the  money  if  I  win,  and  if  I  lose 
you're  just  where  you  were.  It's  not  you  that  goes 
to — goes  to •" 

"  Jail !  "  she  concluded  for  him.  "  Why  don't  you 
say  it?"  She  shook  him  and  his  head  bobbed  until 
it  beat  the  table  so  noisily  that  she  feared  Zoller, 
in  the  next  room,  might  hear. 

Charley  turned  on  her. 

"  It  was  you  got  me  into  this,"  he  said.  '  You 
put  me  up  to  it.  You  got  Mame  to  give  me  that 
damned  power-of-attorney." 

"  If  you'll  only  brace  up  and  listen  to  me,"  Edith 
whispered,  "  I'll  get  you  out.  What  are  you  afraid 
of?  What  can  he  know — yet?  But  the  longer  you 
keep  him  waiting,  the  more  he'll  suspect." 

She  was  afraid  to  give  Charley  another  drink, 
and  yet  she  was  more  afraid  not  to.  She  refilled  his 
glass,  and  he  gulped  its  contents. 

Slowly  a  little  color  came  into  his  cheeks.  He 
stood  up. 

"  You're  right,  Edith,"  he  said.     "  The  fellow's 


332  JIM 

a  bluff.     He  can't  know  anything  yet.     I  like  his 

nerve,  coming  here " 

'  Yes,  yes,"  she  urged,  plucking  at  his  sleeve.  She 
knew  that  his  new  courage  was  a  false  one,  but  she 
must  use  it  before  it  vanished.  "  Come  on." 

She  half  pushed,  half  dragged  him  into  the  old- 
fashioned  parlor. 

§  2.  Mr.  Zoller  was  seated  on  the  extreme  edge 
of  the  stiffest  of  all  the  room's  stiff  chairs.  His  dry 
little  body  was  erect,  his  mouth  closed  like  a  sprung 
trap.  He  rose  slowly  as  Charley  and  Edith  entered. 

Edith  was  trembling  for  the  results  of  her  strata 
gem;  her  eyes  were  on  her  husband.  Charley  was 
trying  to  hide  his  terror  under  a  boisterous  front. 

"How  d'you  do,  Zoller?"  Charley  began,  with 
all  the  appearance  of  heartiness  he  could  muster. 
"  Sorry  I  missed  you  downtown.  One  of  the  big 
telegraph  companies  called  me  unexpectedly  into  con 
ference  about  my  sounder.  They're  going  to 
take " 

The  words  died  away  on  his  lips.  Mr.  Zoller  had 
not  seemed  to  see  the  unsteady  hand  that  Charley 
extended.  Vanaman  was  glad  that  the  parlor  was 
darkened  and  that  Edith  was  now  beside  him. 

"  Just  so,"  said  Mr.  Zoller.  "  Glad  to  hear  it, 
I'm  sure.  Glad  to  hear  your  father's  apprehensions 
about  that  invention  were  unfounded."  His  cold 
eye  looked  quickly  at  Edith  and  back  to  Charley. 
"  I  wanted  a  word  with  you  in  private,  Mr.  Vana 
man,"  he  said:  he  used  to  call  Charley  by  his  first 
name. 

There  was  no  need  for  Charley  to  bluster,  but 


JIM  333 

bluster  he  did,  and  Edith  felt  that  he  was  danger 
ously  overplaying  his  part.  His  unnecessary  hearti 
ness  had  been  patently  exaggerated.  Edith  knew 
that  Zoller  must  see  this  and  guess  what  it  hid. 
She  was  sure  her  husband  was  working  his  false  cour 
age  too  hard,  and  at  this  rate  it  must  soon  give 
way. 

"  I  haven't  any  secrets  from  my  wife,"  Charley 
declared. 

Mr.  Zoller's  smile  was  sour. 

"  Then  Mrs.  Vanaman  is  a  fortunate  wife,"  said 
he.  "  I  rather  thought  that  you  had  no  secrets  from 
her;  but,  as  this  is  a  matter  of  business — 

"  That  makes  no  difference,"  said  Charley. 

"  Very  well,  Mr.  Vanaman.  If  that  is  your  feel 
ing,  very  well."  Without  being  asked  to  do  so, 
Zoller  resumed  his  stiff  seat,  whereat  Charley  and 
Edith,  unconsciously  gripping  hands,  took  places  on 
the  sofa  opposite  him.  "  I  come  from  your  sis 
ter,"  continued  the  lawyer. 

Charley  was  about  to  say  that  he  had  supposed 
as  much,  but  Edith  intervened: 

"  From  Mamie?  "  Her  tone  was  one  of  innocent 
surprise. 

"  Exactly,  Mrs.  Vanaman :  from  Miss  Vanaman, 
whose  trustee  you,  Mr.  Vanaman,  I  believe  are." 

"  Why "  began  Edith. 

But  Charley  cut  her  short.  The  liquor  burned  in 
his  veins  and  surged  to  his  head.  He  had  been 
dragged  to  this  interview,  and  he  was  now  deter 
mined  to  go  through  it  in  his  own  way. 

"  Just  a  moment,  dear,"  he  said. — He  glared  at 
Zoller.  "  Of  course  I'm  Mame's  trustee.  You  know 


334  JIM 

that  as  well  as  I  do.     If Just  a  moment,  I 

say,    dear. — If   my   sister   wanted   to    ask   anything 
about  the  estate,  why  couldn't  she  come  herself?" 

Zoller  looked  him  steadily  in  the  eye. 

"  I  thought  that  was  a  question  I  had  better  not 
put  to  her,"  said  the  lawyer.  "  I  wanted  to  ask 
it,  but  she  expressed  a  desire  to  place  the  matter 
in  my  hands." 

"  Why,"  murmured  Edith,  "  I'm  rather  surprised 
at  Mamie.  I  know  she  and  I  had  a  little  quarrel — 

just  the  merest  quarrel — but  I  didn't  think " 

'  Just  so,  just  so,"  Zoller  interrupted.  "  I  could 
have  written,  Mr.  Vanaman,  but  having  been  your 
father's  attorney,  I  thought  I  had  better  call.  Your 
sister  wants  an  accounting  of  the  management  of  her 
estate." 

Charley's  face  went  very  white,  Edith's  tightened. 
Except  that  their  clasped  hands  gripped  each  other 
closer,  neither  moved.  The  expected  bomb  had  ex 
ploded,  but,  expected  though  it  had  been,  Charley 
knew  of  no  way  to  meet  it  save  by  a  counter  ex 
plosion.  Edith  saw  this  coming,  knew  in  a  flash  that 
there  was  now  no  danger  of  his  collapse — that  the 
danger  was  the  antithesis  of  collapse — tried  to  inter 
fere,  and  was  howled  down.  Disregarding  more 
violently  than  before  his  wife's  efforts  to  re 
strain  him  to  quieter  methods,  Charley  sprang  to 
his  feet. 

"What!"  he  bellowed.  "An  accounting?  My 
sister  asks  her  own  brother  for  an  accounting?  " 

Zoller  was  painfully  unimpressed. 
'  You  have  caught  my  meaning  exactly,"  said  he. 

"  Charley "  Edith  tried  to  interpose. 


JIM  335 

Charley  did  not  heed.  He  was  resolved  to  try 
again.  He  had  worked  himself  into  a  genuinely 
righteous  indignation. 

"  Just  a  moment,  Edith,"  he  once  more  said. 
"My  sister!"  he  cried,  turning  upon  the  unre 
sponsive  lawyer.  "  My  own  sister!  And  she  sends 
her  attorney  to  do.it  for  her!  How  dare  she  treat 
her  only  brother  this  way?  And  how  dare  you,  Zol- 
ler — my  father's  friend :  a  fine  friend  you  are ! — how 
dare  you  permit  her  to  do  so?  " 

Zoller  sat  bolt  upright  and  unflinching. 

"  I  take  my  client's  instructions,"  he  placidly 
answered. 

"  Her  instructions !  Her  insults  to  your  old 
friend's  son,  you  mean !  " 

"  As  you  please,  Mr.  Vanaman.  It  is  not  uncom 
mon  for  the  beneficiary  of  an  estate  to  want  to  know 
what  has  become  of  that  estate — not  at  all  uncom 
mon,  I  assure  you." 

"  Don't  try  to  be  funny,  Zoller.  This  is  a  serious 
business.  I  tell  you — 

"  Mr.  Vanaman,"  said  the  lawyer,  simply,  "  if  all 
is  as  it  should  be,  there  is  no  reason  why  you  should 
think  it  serious." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  charge  me "  Charley's 

cheeks  were  now  purple.  He  leveled  a  shaking  fin 
ger  at  his  tormentor. 

"  Charley!  "  his  wife  admonished. 

"  I  do  not  charge  anything,"  said  the  quiet  Zoller. 
"  Before  you  spoke,  I  could  not  have  suspected  any 
thing.  It  was  you  who  said  this  was  a  serious  busi 
ness.  If  all  is  not  as  it  should  be,  you  can't  exag 
gerate  its  seriousness,  Mr.  Vanaman." 


336  JIM 

»  Zoller " 

Edith  got  up  and  put  her  hand  on  her  husband's 
arm.  Her  hand  was  shaking,  but,  when  she  spoke, 
her  voice  was  low  and  calm. 

"  I'm  sure,  Mr.  Zoller,"  she  said,  "  that  Charley 
wouldn't  hurt  his  sister's  feelings  for  the  world. 
Except  for  me,  there's  nobody  he  loves  as  much  as 
he  loves  Mamie.  No  wonder  he's  hurt,  Mr.  Zol 
ler.  I  can't  understand  business,  and  so  I  don't 
know  just  what  all  this  means;  but  I  can  see  some 
body  has  been  putting  terrible  thoughts  against  her 
brother  into  poor  Mamie's  head,  and " 

"  I'll  see  her  myself!  "  broke  in  Vanaman. 

"  I  think  not,"  said  Zoller,  quietly.  His  cold  eyes 
did  not  so  much  as  wink.  "  I  had  hoped  you  would 
take  this  in  the  proper  spirit;  but  from  the  way  you 
have  taken  it,  I  am  sure  I  shall  be  justified  in  going 
to  her  at  once  and,  as  a  duty  to  a  client,  inform 
ing  her  of  my  suspicions  and  instructing  her  not  to 
see  you." 

"Mr.  Zoller!"  pleaded  Edith. 

"  Leave  this  house!  "  blustered  Charley.  His  de 
sire  to  be  impressive  raised  him  to  the  vocabulary 
of  his  prospectuses:  "  This  interview  must  terminate. 
Leave  my  house  this  instant!  " 

The  lawyer  bowed.  He  got  up  slowly  and  stood 
erect. 

"  The  terms  of  your  trusteeship  provide,"  he  said 
with  a  slow  clarity,  "  that  an  accounting  may  be  de 
manded  and  must  be  provided  at  any  time  and  with 
out  notice;  but  my  client  is  disposed  to  be  generous. 
She  will  give  you  ten  days.  In  ten  days  from  date, 
therefore,  we  shall  expect  your  figures.  In  the  mean- 


JIM  337 

time,  I  have  no  objection  to  leaving  your  sister's 
house." 

He  went  out  without  listening  to  Edith's  endeav 
ors  to  undo  something  of  what  had  been  done. 

§  3.  Husband  and  wife  stood  confronting  each 
other  in  a  fear  that  began  by  expressing  itself  in 
mutual  recriminations.  As  soon  as  the  front  door 
closed,  Edith  turned  on  Charley.  As  if  it  had  been 
a  paper  mask,  all  the  gentle  innocence  that  Zoller 
had  seen  was  torn  from  her  face.  Her  face  was 
that  of  a  vindictive  savage. 

"Now  you've  done  it!"  she  cried.  "You  must 
brag !  You  must  try  and  bully  him !  You  made  him 
suspect — and  now  you've  probably  bragged  and  bul 
lied  yourself  into  jail!  " 

Charley's  look  mirrored  hers: 

"  He  suspected  all  along.  He  suspected  because 
Mame  did — and  you  know  what  got  Mame  down  on 
us;  you  set  her  against  us:  you  did!  She's  the  easi 
est  woman  in  the  world  to  get  along  with;  but  you 
set  her  against  us  by  never  being  decent  to  her, 
fighting  with  her,  and  telephoning  to  Tyrrell  when 
I'd  told  you  to  keep  away  from  him!  " 

"  You  forget  one  thing,"  said  the  wife:  "  you  for 
get  that  you  gave  the  cause  for  suspicion.  If  you 
hadn't  cheated  your  own  sister,  there'd  have  been 
nothing  to  suspect  you  of." 

"  Who  suggested  me  getting  the  power-of- 
attorney?  " 

"  Oh,  I  did,  but  I  didn't  think  I'd  got  it  for  a 
fool.  Yes,  that's  what  I  said:  a  fool!  You  not 


338  JIM 

only  stole — you  did  it  in  such  a  way  that  you  were 
sure  to  be  found  out  sooner  or  later,  anyhow." 

"  Stop  that!  "  Charley  raised  his  clenched  fist  as 
if  it  grasped  a  weapon. 

"  I  won't,"  said  Edith.  "  I  tell  you,  if  you  ever 
lay  your  hand  on  me  I'll  leave  you  forever — leave 
you  to  brag  yourself  into  jail.  I  said  you  were  a 
fool  and  you  are  a  fool.  Even  now  you're  a  fool. 
You're  wasting  time  accusing  your  wife  when  you 
ought  to  be  telephoning  to  Mame  to  come  out  and 
meet  you,  so  as  to  get  her  away  from  Mrs.  Hamil 
ton's  before  this  Zoller  gets  there." 

She  was  right  about  that.  Charley  darted  to  the 
telephone  in  the  hall.  She  heard  him  tear  the  leaves 
of  the  telephone-directory,  rattle  at  the  hook,  and 
swear  at  the  exchange  for  what  he  took  to  be  its 
tardiness.  She  heard  him  saying: 

"  I  want  to  talk  to  Miss  Vanaman.  .  .  *  ,, 

"  Yes,  Miss  Mame  Vanaman.  .  .  . 

"  Never  mind  who  it  is.    I  want  to  talk  to  her.  .  .  . 

"What?  .  .  . 

"  Why  not  ... 

"Well,  then,  it's  her  brother;  it's  Mr.  Charles 
Vanaman.  .  .  . 

"What?  .  .  . 

"  But  I  tell  you  I'm  her  brother.  I Here, 

Central's  cut  in.  Hello,  hello,  hello,  Central !  What 
the  hell  do  you  mean  cutting  in  on  me  when  .  .  . 

"What's  that?     They  rang  of?" 

He  staggered  back  to  Edith.  His  anger  was  gone ; 
there  was  only  a  helpless  terror  in  his  staring  eyes. 

"  She  won't  talk  to  me,"  he  gasped.  "  That 
woman — it  must  have  been  Mrs.  Hamilton;  I  don't 


JIM  339 

know  who  it  was — says  Mame's  got  instructions  from 
Zoller.  He  must  have  'phoned  from  the  corner  drug 
store  as  soon  as  he  left  here."  A  last  flicker  of 
enmity  flamed  in  his  voice.  "  Whoever  was  talking 
to  me  said  you  made  things  the  way  they  are;  so, 
you  see,  it  was  you  excited  her  suspicions.  It  seems 
to  be  your  nature  to  excite  'em." 

"  Suspicions  !  "  Edith  echoed.  "  Nothing  wrong 
had  happened  when  I  quarreled  with  her.  Suspi 
cions!  I'm  sick  of  that  word.  I  never  once  heard 
it  from  Jim,  and  since  I've  been  with  you  I've  hardly 
ever  heard  any  other.  Suspicion  seems  to  run  in 
your  lovely  family.  If  you  hadn't  had  suspicions 
you'd  never  have  lost  Tyrrell — you'd  have  all  the 
money  you  needed  now." 

Charley's  face  changed.  Tyrrell  meant  escape. 
Tyrrell  meant  the  only  possible  means  of  escape. 
Mame  was  under  Zoller's  thumb,  and  Zoller  in 
tended — oh,  Charley  knew  he  intended — to  send 
Charles  Vanaman  to  jail.  The  hunted  man  forgot 
all  else  that  his  wife  had  said;  he  caught  her  hands; 
he  was  shaken  by  a  paroxysm  of  tears. 

"  Oh,  Edith,"  he  sobbed,  "  we've  got  to  have  this 
money;  it's  jail  for  me  if  I  don't  get  it,  and  I  do 
love  you,  and  there's  nobody  to  get  it  from  but  Tyr 
rell.  I  do  love  you ;  before  God,  I  do  love  you ! 
We've  got  only  ten  days,  and  in  that  little  time  we 
can't  find  money  anywhere  but  from  Tyrrell.  We 
must  bring  him  back!  Can't  we  bring  him  back? 
Can't — can't  you,  dear?  " 

He  hung  upon  her  answer.  Edith  listened  with 
impassive  face;  she  was  thinking  of  Tyrrell's  last 
words  to  her  in  the  restaurant. 


340  JIM 

"  Perhaps  I  can,"  she  said.  Oddly  enough,  "  The 
Tango  Dancers,"  Jim's  picture,  swam  into  her 
memory. 

"Try!  "  Charley  implored.  "  Please,  please  try, 
for  my  sake.  If  you  have  to,  you  may  flirt  with 
him — just  a  little,  you  know.  I  won't  be  jealous  any 
more,  dear.  I'm  sorry  I  was.  Forgive  me!  Do 
try — do,  do  try.  For  God's  sake,  Edith — for  mine ! 
You  can  do  it,  if  you'll  only  try." 

She  heard  him,  and  she  thought  that  she  under 
stood.  She  was  sorry  for  him;  she  was  disgusted; 
she  was  elated. 

"You're  sure  you  won't  be  jealous?" 

"  No,  no,  no !  "  vowed  Vanaman. 

"  Well,  then,  I'll  try,"  said  Vanaman's  wife. 


TWENTY-FIRST  CHAPTER 

HE  had  ten  days — ten  days  in  which  to  do  the 
thing  he  had  been  trying  to  do  for  months 
in  vain. 

This  time,  moreover,  the  thing  was  final:  there 
was  to  be  no  higgling;  the  issue  would  be  decisive. 
He  had  come  to  his  last  resource — and  that  was 
Edith. 

The  discovery  had  come  to  him  quite  simply;  it 
had  appeared  to  him  on  the  crest  of  that  crisis 
after  Zoller  had  left  husband  and  wife  together. 
The  lawyer  opened  the  flood-gates  of  disaster  upon 
his  client's  brother.  To  Charley,  sputtering  and 
struggling  in  the  onrush  of  those  waters,  this  means 
of  safety  had  presented  itself,  bobbing  on  the  waves, 
and  he  clutched  at  it  with  no  more  surprise  and 
no  more  debate  than  a  drowning  man  has  for  a 
life-belt:  Vanaman  thought  as  much  of  questioning 
its  ethics  or  its  effects  upon  his  pride  as  the  drown 
ing  man  thinks  of  questioning  the  patent  rights  of 
the  manufacturers  of  the  life-preserver.  It  was  the 
next  day  when  he  began  to  think  of  these  things: 
the  next  day,  when  he  had  his  arms  through  the 
belt  and  fancied  he  could  already  feel  the  tug  at 
the  rope  that  was  to  drag  him  ashore. 

Then  he  had  his  first  moment  for  reflection,  and 
his  first  reflection  was  this:  that  he,  a  man,  had 
cried  out  for  help  from  a  woman.  The  voice  of 
tradition  led  all  other  voices;  his  early  conventions 

341 


342  JIM 

were  the  first  forces  to  awaken  in  his  stunned  con 
sciousness. 

He  brought  a  fresh  bottle  of  whisky  into  his  of 
fice,  over  which  to  consider  this.  He  locked  the  door 
against  callers.  He  reflected  bitterly  that  nobody 
of  importance  would  be  likely  to  call,  but  he  added 
that  duns  were  plenty,  and  he  did  not  want  to  be 
disturbed;  so  he  put  a  card  on  the  door,  saying  that 
he  would  be  absent  until  two  o'clock  in  the  after 
noon.  Then  he  sat  down,  among  the  blueprints  and 
the  prospectuses,  and  took  a  long  drink. 

He  was  seeking  rescue  from  a  woman.  Well, 
why  not?  That  woman  was  his  wife;  he  had  housed 
and  clothed  and  fed  her:  he  had  a  right  to  expect 
some  return.  If  he  hadn't  married  her,  where  would 
she  be  now?  There  was  something  that  ought  to 
gall  him  more  than  the  mere  fact  of  her  womanhood : 
it  was  that  his  one  help  was  a  woman  that  Jim  had 
cast  oft.  He  fought  with  this  reflection  until  his 
shame  conquered  it.  What  matter  whence  the  aid 
came,  so  long  as  it  was  efficacious?  It  was  not  for 
him  to  criticize  its  origins.  Suppose  she  had,  that 
night  of  the  dinner  at  the  Martinique,  flirted  a  bit 
with  Tyrrell,  and  again  the  other  evening:  it  was 
a  lucky  thing  for  him,  for  her  husband,  that  she 
had. 

He  drank  and  grew  repentant.  It  was  low  of 
him  to  think  of  her  as  he  had  been  thinking.  Pie 
was  being  saved  by  the  woman  he  had  suspected  and 
upbraided.  Edith  forgave  him;  she  was  a  fine 
woman;  she  was  forgetting  all  the  evil  he  had  done 
her  and  was  coming  nobly  to  his  help. 

But  the  means  he  had  asked  her  to  use?    He  had 


343 

asked  her,  in  almost  so  many  words He 

wouldn't  think  about  it.  His  position  was  one  in 
which  choice  was  impossible.  He  had  to  take  what 
he  could  get  and  be  thankful.  Women  did  this  sort 
of  thing  all  the  time;  New  York  was  full  of  it; 
and  their  husbands  let  them  amuse  themselves.  It 
was  not  so  bad  as  the  flagrant  tangoing  that  the  town 
was  full  of.  It  wasn't  as  if  she  were  going  too  far, 
as  if  she  were  doing  it  without  his  knowledge.  It 
wasn't  as  if  she  were  doing  it  for  its  own  sake 

He  caught  himself  up  on  that.  Was  she  doing 
it  only  for  him?  If  she  were  doing  it  only  to  save 
the  situation,  she  was  doing  it  to  save  herself  as 
well  as  him.  He  had  told  her  that  her  position 
would  be  unchanged,  though  he  might  go  to  jail;  but 
he  knew  it  was  not  true,  and  Edith  also  must  know 
it.  He  was  soothing  his  wounded  conventions  by 
saying  that  it  was  proper  for  a  man  to  call  for 
rescue  from  his  wife;  but  it  was  precisely  because 
Edith  was  his  wife  that  Charley  could  doubt  the  un 
selfishness  of  her  motives:  his  financial  ruin  would 
be  hers.  Of  course  she  was  willing.  .  .  . 

The  more  he  drank  and  reflected,  the  more  will 
ing  she  seemed.  She  seemed  almost  too  willing. 
That  question — "  You're  sure  you  won't  be  jeal 
ous?  " — was  disconcerting.  How  did  he  know  what 
desires  had  prompted  it?  Desires?  They  might 
be  intentions.  Now  that  he  came  to  think  of  it, 
why  had  he  assumed  that,  where  he  had  lost,  she 
could  win?  What  was  it  made  him  so  sure — for 
he  was  sure — of  her  influence  with  Tyrrell?  As  a 
child  fingers  a  sore  tooth  that  he  knows  it  will  hurt 
him  to  finger,  Charley  played  with  this  idea.  He 


344  JIM 

began  to  remember  a  hundred  careless  words  of 
Edith's,  hints  and  gestures  that  were  really  inno 
cent;  to  torment  into  malignant  meanings  unguarded 
expressions  that  he  had  seen  pass  over  her  face. 
Saving  him?  Yes,  she  might  be  saving  him,  but  at 
what  price?  She  had  tricked  one  husband  already. 

Yet  he  must  be  saved.  He  thought  of  Zoller's 
dry,  hard  features  and  piercing  eyes,  and  wriggled  in 
his  chair.  Zoller  was  the  kind  of  man  from  whom 
no  mercy,  Charley  was  sure,  could  be  expected.  Al 
ready,  Zoller  more  than  suspected.  Zoller  had 
Mame  under  his  thumb.  Charley  saw  the  court 
room,  the  jury — he  saw  the  jail.  He  must  be  saved, 
and  there  was  only  one  way.  .  .  . 

He  would  watch  Edith.  He  would  be  diplomatic. 
She  would  not  know;  but  he  would  watch  her.  He 
must  be  saved;  but  there  was  just  one  thing  he 
wouldn't  stand — at  least,  not  if  he  could  help  it, 
and  not  one  second  after  the  danger  was  past. 

§  2.  Charley  watched  and  waited,  torn  by  the 
pangs  of  that  jealousy  which  he  had  promised  to 
avoid,  and  racked  by  fears  lest  the  plan  which 
caused  his  jealousy  should  fail.  Of  his  scant  ten 
days  of  grace,  one  day  passed.  Then  two  and 
three.  At  first,  he  asked  her  no  questions,  because 
he  could  not  trust  his  tongue,  and  Edith  told  him 
nothing.  Was  she  playing  with  him?  Was  she  in 
earnest  with  Tyrrell?  Was  she  going  too  far  and 
too  fast?  Was  she  going  far  and  fast  enough? 
When  he  at  last  ventured  to  seek  reports  from  her, 
he  got  them,  but  there  were  scores  of  clamoring 
inquiries  that  he  dared  not  make. 


JIM  345 

He  contemplated  going  to  Mamc,  confessing 
everything,  and  throwing  himself  upon  her  sisterly 
mercy.  He  tried  again  and  again  to  get  to  her, 
with  one  plea  or  another,  but  he  could  not  reach  her. 
She  refused  to  answer  the  telephone,  though  he  rang 
it  at  all  hours.  He  went  to  Mrs.  Hamilton's,  but  the 
maid  brought  back  word  that  his  sister  would  see 
nobody. 

§  3.  As  for  Edith,  she  questioned  not  at  all.  She 
would  not  hurry  Tyrrell,  who  seemed  loath  to  hurry, 
but  she  would  be  in  time;  she  would  save  Charley, 

and  then Well,  it  was  enough  for  her  now 

that  the  door  was  again  opened;  that  although  she 
had  still  to  return  to  the  shadows  after  each  visit 
in  the  light,  those  visits  were  free  and  frequent; 
it  was  enough  to  give  herself  once  more  to  the  lure 
of  the  music,  the  magic  of  the  dancing,  the  thrill 
of  Tyrrell's  arm  about  her  waist,  of  his  body  moving 
closely  and  harmoniously  with  hers,  of  his  will  rul 
ing  her  will. 

She  would  remember  his  conversation  in  the  res 
taurant  when  she  had  been  cut  by  Muriel  Carson  and 
hailed  by  Effie  Mitchell,  the  conversation  in  which 
he  had  so  nearly,  and  yet  so  differently,  taken  the 
position  that  Mertcheson  had  taken,  and  she  would 
try  to  gauge  the  value  of  his  feelings  toward  her. 
Tyrrell  had  always  been  much  more  than  her  match 
at  talk — that  was  one  of  his  strongest  charms  for  her 
— and  now  she  wondered,  more  seriously  than  ever 
before,  how  much  of  sincerity,  of  abiding  sincerity, 
underlay  his  words.  If  there  was  all  sincerity,  she 
must  use  it;  if  there  was  little,  she  must  create  more; 


346  JIM 

if  there  was  none,  she  must  lose.  Weighing  Tyr- 
rell's  heart,  she  came  to  know  the  full  measure  of 
her  own;  she  was  aware  of  a  purpose  against  which 
her  remnant  of  conscience  rebelled,  but  she  tried  to 
quiet  her  conscience  by  saying  that  she  was  acting 
at  Charley's  orders,  that  she  would  save  her  husband 
before  seeking  through  another  man  what  she  had 
sought  and  failed  to  find  through  Charley.  She 
would  persuade  Tyrrell  to  help  Charley,  for  nothing 
if  possible,  for  everything  if  necessary,  and  then, 
once  Charley  was  safe 

She  did  not  contemplate  leaving  him;  something 
in  her,  something  imperious,  demanded  of  her  a 
warped  loyalty  and  confidently  now  assumed  in  him 
a  loyalty  unwarped.  She  had  left  Jim,  but  she  must 
not  leave  Charley.  Much  as  she  disliked  him,  she 
must  not  leave  him.  She  could  not.  When  she  had 
tied  herself  to  Charley  in  order  to  get  rid  of  Jim, 
she  had  used  a  knot  stronger,  she  realized,  than  mar 
riage.  There  seemed  now  only  one  thing  that  could 
break  it:  a  blow.  Once  she  had  thought  that  she 
might  almost  have  respected  Jim  had  he  ever  struck 
her:  she  knew  that  if  Charley  ever  struck  her,  she 
would  leave  him. 

During  the  brief  hours  that  she  had  with  him, 
she  would  sit  regarding  her  husband  in  a  quiet  specu 
lation.  She  no  longer  concealed  from  herself  the 
truth  that  she  was  in  love  with  Tyrrell. 

§  4.  The  game  that  she  played  approached  its 
decisive  moment  on  the  fourth  day  of  Charley's 
respite.  She  had  pointed  out  to  him  the  need  of 
investing  something  in  the  endeavor,  of  making  the 


JIM  347 

last  play.  They  must  have  a  quiet  that  could  not 
be  had  in  the  public  dining-room  of  a  restaurant, 
they  ought  to  have  the  appeal  of  an  intimate  family 
atmosphere  that  could  not  be  had  in  any  such 
restaurant's  private  rooms:  Mame's  bank-account 
was  again  drawn  upon;  servants  were  engaged,  and 
Tyrrell  was  asked  to  luncheon  at  their  own  home. 

Charley  returned  excitedly  from  his  office  on  the 
night  before  this  luncheon.  He  was  smiling  with 
a  new  hope. 

"  It  never  rains  but  it  pours,"  he  said.  "  I've  got 
another  chance — and  it  makes  Tyrrell  look  like  a 
piker." 

Edith's  face  showed  disappointment,  but  her  dis 
appointment  was  groundless:  Charley  had  learned 
something  of  caution;  he  would  not  throw  over  a 
certainty  for  an  uncertainty;  the  luncheon  was  to 
begin  as  they  had  planned  it,  the  husband  arriving 
late,  in  order  that  she  might  have  a  free  oppor 
tunity  to  make  her  appeal  to  their  guest.  The  only 
change  would  be  in  the  time  of  Charley's  departure: 
he  must  leave  early.  It  was  not  to  be  told  Tyrrell 
until  after  he  had  either  given  his  support  or  defi 
nitely  declined  to  give  it,  but  the  fact  was  that  a 
stroke  of  unaccountable  good  luck  had  granted 
Charley  permission  to  interview,  on  the  following 
afternoon,  one  of  the  most  important  officers  of  one 
of  the  two  great  telegraph  companies :  somehow  the 
yards  of  red  tape  that  enveloped  it  had  been  un 
wound  from  a  letter  Charley  had  written  weeks  ago, 
and  a  second  vice-president,  having  other  business 
that  brought  him  from  seashore  to  town  for  a  few 


348  JIM 

hours,   consented  to   talk  to  Vanaman  for  fifteen 
minutes.  .  .  . 

§  5.  Tyrrell  was  on  time.  He  had  his  accus 
tomed  self-possession;  he  looked  even  more  at  ease, 
more  removed  from  Edith's  own  world,  than  usual, 
and  he  showed  no  surprise  when  told  that  business 
would  detain  his  host.  She  was  inclined  to  believe 
it  was  only  her  own  sense  of  the  impending  crisis 
that  made  her  feel  beneath  his  lighter  talk  for  a 
sense  of  finality  corresponding  to  her  own. 

She  thought  that,  this  time,  she  managed  the  con 
versation.  Sitting  close  to  Tyrrell,  she  directed  their 
words  to  Charley;  she  sketched,  rather  deftly,  Vana 
man  in  the  character  of  a  husband,  not  loved  per 
haps,  but  pitied,  whose  wife  must  suffer  through  his 
continued  poverty.  Then  she  said,  boldly: 

"  If  you'd  really  understood  how  things  were  with 
us,  you  wouldn't  have  had  that  hard  luck  on  the 
stock  exchange." 

She  said  it  so  boldly  that  even  Tyrrell  did  not  at 
once  follow  her: 

"That  hard  luck?" 

"  Yes:  the  hard  luck  you  told  him  made  it  impos 
sible  to  back  the  sounder  the  way  you'd  hoped  to  do 
— the  way  you'd  promised.  You  wouldn't  have  had 
it." 

He  followed  her  now;  he  passed  her: 

"  Luck  goes  by  favor — like  some  other  things." 

'  Your  luck  goes  by  your  own  favor.  You  told 
me  you  might  reconsider  yours.  You  told  me  that 
the  other  day  at  luncheon.  Do  you  remember? 
Have  you  reconsidered?  There's  no  use  my  pre- 


JIM  349 

tending  it  won't  mean  a  lot  to  Charley  if  you  have 
— and  to  me." 

Tyrrell  bent  toward  her. 

"  If  I  do  this,"  he  said,  quietly,  "  I  won't  be  doing 
it  for — him." 

She  blushed  as  vividly  as  ever  she  had  blushed 
in  Ayton.  She  was  proud  because  of  the  evidence 
of  her  coming  success  in  securing  the  money,  and 
proud  because  that  success  was  to  be  won  entirely 
by  her  own  charms. 

"No,"  she  said;  "I  suppose  it  will  be  because 
you  believe  in  the  sounder." 

Tyrrell  shook  his  head.  "  Not  even  that.  In 
fact,  I've  been  looking  into  the  telegraphic  situation, 
and  I'm  not  sure—  But,  no,  the  only  reason  that 
I'd  do  it  would  be — for  you." 

She  looked  up  at  him.  Her  lips  were  parted; 
her  breast  visibly  rose  and  fell. 

"  You  mean—      "  she  began. 

"  I  mean  I  don't  want  to  see  you  unhappy,"  he 
answered;  "I  mean  I  don't  want  to  see  your  hus 
band  ruined  financially;  but  I  mean  that,  apart  from 
the  ruin,  I  don't  care  two  straws  what  happens  to 
him.  I'll  do  this  thing,  but — I  shall  want  you." 

He  took  her  hand  as  he  had  taken  it  on  the  night 
when  Charley  had  interrupted  them.  He  put  it 
to  his  lips.  She  saw  him  tremble  as  he  leaned 
farther  toward  her.  His  ease  left  him;  his  voice 
was  broken,  his  tone  low: 

"  I  can't  help  telling  you,  Edith,  I've  got  to  tell 
you.  I  see  what  your  life's  been  here :  it's  too  glar 
ing  not  to  be  seen.  And  I  see  tremendously  what  it 
ought  to  be  and  what — what  it  must  be.  I'll  do 


350  JIM 

this  thing.  I'll  do  it  for  you.  I  won't  say  I'll  want 
my  reward,  but  I  will  say  I  want  you.  I  want  you; 
but  I  want  you  because—  He  stopped.  He  took 

her  other  hand.  He  looked  away.  "  Because  I  love 
you,"  he  said. 

Her  heart  hammered  in  her  throat.  He  did  love 
her:  this  man,  who  stood  for  all  she  desired  in  life, 
who  possessed  what  a  man  of  Charley's  sort  never 
could  possess.  Without  hurting  Charley,  even  by 
helping  Charley,  who  must  care  more  for  his  inven 
tion  than  for  her 

With  a  premonitory  clattering  at  the  lock,  Char 
ley  came  in  by  the  front-door.  He  came  in  noisily 
and  slowly  and  found  them  seated  far  apart.  He 
kissed  his  wife's  offered  cheek  and  shook  hands  with 
his  guest. 

"  Hello,  Tyrrell!  "  he  said.  "  Sorry  I  was  late. 
Business,  you  know.  And  business  is  going  to  take 
me  away  as  soon  as  the  feed's  over.  I  only  wish  it 
was  paying  business."  .  .  . 

When  they  went  into  the  dining-room  Charley 
went  first,  and  Edith  caught  Tyrrell's  hand  and 
pressed  it.  That  pressure  seemed  a  promise,  and 
before  the  luncheon  had  ended,  one  of  Tyrrell's 
checks  was  in  Charley's  wallet  next  to  Charley's 
heart. 


TWENTY-SECOND  CHAPTER 

NOTHING  that  Charley  Vanaman  had  in  all 
his  life  been  called  upon  to  do  was  harder 
than  the  thing  he  had  to  do  this  afternoon. 
The  money  Tyrrell  had  given  was  referred  to  by  its 
donor  as  "just  enough  for  a  preliminary  canter"; 
more,  it  was  to  be  supposed,  would  follow  if  the 
preliminary  canter  gave  satisfactory  results;  but 
this  initial  sum  would  not  much  more  than  cover  the 
peculations  from  Mame. 

Her  accounts  could  now  easily  enough  be  straight 
ened  out,  and  Charley  was  saved  from  Zoller;  but 
the  position  of  the  invention  was  really  little  better 
than  it  had  been  before.  There  were  other  debtors 
still  pressing;  there  was  not  the  money  required  for 
an  independent  start.  Should  Tyrrell  later  make 
inquiries,  it  would  be  possible  to  pretend  such  a  start 
and  to  say  that  the  result  had  been  a  failure — so 
that  Tyrrell  would  not  press  as  Zoller  had  done— 
but  the  sounder  and  its  maker  would  be  penniless. 

Charley  must  take  up  again,  at  the  appointed 
interview  with  that  portentous  second  vice-president, 
the  dreary  task  of  wooing  the  established  telegraph 
companies.  This  interview  was  the  most  sanguine 
chance  that  had  come  to  him  for  a  long  time;  only 
yesterday  it  had  seemed  most  hopeful;  but  to-day 
he  wondered  whether  it  would  come  to  anything, 
after  all.  If  it  did,  he  could  show  Tyrrell  a  clean 
account,  and  they  would  both  earn  a  fortune;  if  it 

351 


352  JIM 

did  not,  then,  though  Tyrrell  could  be  convinced 
that  his  loss  was  unavoidable,  Charley  would  be  a 
pauper. 

The  moment  Tyrrell's  money  was  in  Charley's 
pocket,  the  distressed  inventor  vanished  and  the 
jealous  husband  reappeared.  He  must  leave  the 
luncheon  early,  must  leave  Tyrrell  and  Edith  to 
gether — and  he  had,  on  entering  the  parlor,  seen  his 
wife  looking  into  Tyrrell's  eyes  with  eyes  that  Char 
ley  'understood  to  be  playing  well  the  game  he  had 
set  her  to  play.  Entirely  too  well:  he  must  go  away 
when  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  explain  Edith's 
attitude  on  the  mere  hypothesis  that  she  was  flirting 
with  Tyrrell  for  her  husband's  sake. 

"  Once  he'd  signed  this  check,  he  acted  as  if  he'd 
bought  her  with  it,"  brooded  Charley;  "and  she 
acted  as  if  she  liked  being  bought." 

As  he  was  rushed  downtown  in  the  stifling  sub 
way,  that  idea  loomed  larger  and  larger  in  his  mind. 
He  had  told  her  that  she  might  flirt — "  a  little  " — 
if  she  found  flirtation  the  only  means  of  capture, 
but  he  had  meant  the  verb  "  to  flirt "  to  be  inter 
preted  in  its  narrowest  sense.  He  had  never  meant 
anything  more;  he  swore  that  he  never  had, 
and  Edith  must  know  it.  Yet  Tyrrell's  face  was  the 
face  of  a  man  that  has  been  given  at  least  a  promise, 
and  although  it  might  be  well  that  the  Bostonian 
thought  he  was  making  a  purchase,  that  Edith  should 
fall  in  with  this  view — and  probably  as  a  ready  chat 
tel — was  intolerable. 

He  added  to  his  mistrust  of  his  wife  a  hatred  for 
Tyrrell.  In  spite  of  what  there  had  indeed  been  for 
him  to  observe,  it  was  a  blind  hatred,  and  in  spite 


JIM  353 

of  all  the  reasons  that  there  might  be  for  a  rea 
sonable  hatred,  it  was  reasonless.  It  transcended 
right  and  reason,  as  the  most  effective  love  and 
hatred  always  do.  It  was  the  instinctive  rage  of  the 
rude  for  the  suave,  of  the  ignorant  for  the  knowing, 
of  the  man  that,  having  set  out  to  trick  another,  be 
gins  to  suspect  the  other  of  turning  the  trick. 

His  jealousy  rushed  back  upon  him.  He  was  at 
least  safe  from  Zoller;  there  was  no  fear  of  jail 
to  dam  the  onrush,  no  demand  of  expediency  to 
block  the  way.  Love,  in  its  first  sense,  had  long 
ago  left  him;  it  had  retreated  and  returned,  never 
once  coming  back  with  quite  the  force  of  the  previous 
time,  disappearing  at  last  completely  and  leaving  be 
hind  it  only  the  passionate  counterfeit,  which  itself 
ebbed  and  flowed,  and  always  retreated  farther  than 
it  advanced,  until  it  retreated  forever. 

That  is  love's  one  way  of  going.  Charley's  love 
had  been  swept  back  by  the  lies  bred  from  his  first 
clandestine  relationship  and  by  the  poverty,  the  dis 
appointment,  and  the  alcoholism  consequent  on  that. 
What  remained  was  his  conventional  pride  as  a  hus 
band — the  shapeless  something  that  men  of  his  train 
ing  call  "  honor  "—which  is  tenderer  than  love,  more 
easily  hurt,  alert  to  press  into  its  own  bosom  every 
sword. 

He  writhed  in  his  seat  in  the  subway-train.  It 
might  be  bad  policy  to  drink  before  keeping  his 
appointment  with  the  telegraph  official,  but  he  had 
to  drink.  He  drank  at  the  saloon  nearest  the  station 
from  which  he  issued  to  the  street,  and  the  liquor 
that  he  took  to  strengthen  his  resistance  reinforced 
his  jealousy. 


354  JIM 

To  think  that,  a  few  brief  days  ago,  he  had  suf 
fered  at  the  thought  of  seeking  aid  from  a  woman ! 
That  error  was  merely  one  of  tactics.  He  had  imag 
ined  himself  using  Edith,  and  all  the  while  she  was 
using  him.  His  vanity  quivered.  He  should  have 
seen  from  the  first — he,  who  thought  he  could  man 
age  men  and  women — that,  at  best,  she  was  trying 
only  to  save  herself.  "  You're  sure  you  won't  be 
jealous?  "  He  invested  those  words  with  a  tone  to 
fit  his  mood.  Saving  him  with  herself?  A  lot  she 
cared  about  saving  him !  She  loved  this  other  man : 
he  sneered  at  his  use  of  the  word  "  love  "  in  such 
a  connection.  She  was  using  Charley's  misfortune — 
the  misfortune  into  which  she  had  led  him — to  hook 
Tyrrell,  and,  once  Tyrrell  was  hooked,  she  would 
toss  her  husband  away. 

"  What  a  mess  I've  got  into!  "  Charley  groaned. 

How  had  he  got  into  it — how  except  through  his 
wife?  If  he  had  never  joined  Edith  in  that  con 
spiracy  to  cheat  Jim  at  law,  old  man  Vanaman's 
money  would  have  gone  mostly  to  old  man  Vana 
man's  son.  There  would  have  been  no  need  to  steal 
from  Mame,  no  need  to  truckle  to  Tyrrell.  With 
a  burst  of  fresh  hatred  for  his  wife,  Charley  de 
clared  in  his  own  heart  that,  by  teaching  him  to  help 
in  the  cheating  of  Jim,  she  had  taught  him  dishon 
esty,  that  through  the  conspiracy  against  her  first 
husband,  she  had  wrought  the  moral  ruin  of  her 
second. 

"  And  now,"  he  concluded,  "  she's  going  to  do 
what  I  ought  to  have  known  from  the  first  she'd 
do.  I  ought  to  have  known  it  when  I  was  fool 
enough  to  marry  her.  If  a  woman's  crooked  once, 


JIM  355 

she'll  always  be  crooked:  she's  going  to  play  me 
the  same  trick  she  played  Jim !  " 

§  2.  It  was  in  this  frame  of  mind  that  he  entered 
the  building  which  contained  the  executive  offices  of 
the  telegraph  company.  He  passed  the  revolving 
doors,  took  the  elevator,  and  went  into  the  waiting- 
room,  where,  behind  a  brass-rail,  a  single  office-boy 
was  seated. 

Charley  knew  the  place  well:  time  was  when  he 
had  haunted  it.  Then  he  came  to  seek  an  inter 
view;  now  he  had  at  least  been  asked  to  come, 
though  in  reply  to  a  written  appeal.  He  was  laughed 
at  then  by  underlings,  but  he  was  hopeful  of  his 
invention  and  secure  in  his  domestic  pride;  now, 
though  still  full  of  faith  in  the  sounder,  he  felt  him 
self  disgraced  at  home,  and  the  office-boy's  grin  hurt 
him  as  grievously  as  if  it  were  directed  at  him  for 
Edith's  treachery.  He  took  his  stand  on  the  fact 
of  his  appointment. 

"  Here,"  he  said,  sharply.  "  Take  in  my  card 
to  Mr.  Linton.  I  have  an  engagement  with  him." 

The  boy  was  still  grinning. 

"  Mr.  Linton's  gone,"  he  said. 

"No,  he's  not,"  said  Charley.  "  Come  on  now; 
hurry  up.  I  tell  you,"  he  went  on,  as  if  the  phrase 
was  a  charm,  "  I  have  an  engagement  with  him — 
and  I'm  busy." 

"  He  went  out  five  minutes  ago." 

Charley  stared: 

"  But  I  have  an  engagement  with  him!  " 

"  I'm  sorry,  but  he  went  out." 

Charley  looked  at  his  watch: 


356  JIM 

"  I'm  on  time  and  I  have  an  engagement  with 
him." 

The  boy's  grin  became  pitying.  He  shrugged, 
took  the  card,  and  left  the  waiting-room  by  an  inner 
door.  When  he  returned  it  was  with  the  word  that 
the  second  vice-president  had  been  unexpectedly 
called  back  to  his  country-place,  but  would  return 
for  an  hour  on  the  following  day. 

Charley  left  the  office  under  fire  of  the  office- 
boy's  grin. 

"  Called  back  unexpectedly !  "  sneered  the  inventor. 
"  Someone  wanted  to  play  golf  with  him,  I  guess, 
and  so  business  don't  matter." 

He  went  down  in  the  elevator,  cursing  his  luck. 
Surely  this  was  the  last  straw.  He  banged  through 
the  revolving  doors  to  the  street.  Here  he  had  been 
on  a  fool's  errand  while  his  wife  was  making  a 
greater  fool  of  him  by  amusing  herself  with  an 
other  man  uptown. 

§  3.  "  Oh,  it's  Mr.  Vanaman!  " 

Charley  looked  up.  Leaving  the  hall  by  the  same 
door  by  which  he  was  leaving  it  was  Claire  Girodet, 
his  former  stenographer. 

Sometimes,  in  the  old  days,  he  had  enjoyed  sit 
ting  at  his  desk  and  watching  her,  with  a  quickened 
pulse-beat,  as,  her  back  turned  to  him,  she  bent  over 
her  typewriter,  her  shoulders  broad  and  firm,  her 
warm,  white  neck  caressed  by  one  little  loosened 
strand  of  her  jet-black  hair.  When  she  would  sit 
beside  his  desk  to  take  his  dictation,  her  nearness 
made  him  breathe  heavily,  and  once,  bending  his 
flushed  face  close  to  her  round,  pink  cheeks,  as  they 


JIM  357 

scrutinized  a  letter,  his  knee  touched  hers  beneath 
the  arm  of  the  desk:  he  remembered  in  what  a  panic 
he  had  drawn  away  from  her.  Yet  he  had  never 
once  translated  sensation  in  the  terms  of  thought, 
never  once  dreamed  of  a  fuller  interpretation. 
Edith  had  forced  him  a  step  in  that  direction  by 
giving  the  form  and  life  of  words  to  the  suspicions 
bred  in  her  by  their  betrayal  of  Jim  and  by  allow 
ing  those  suspicions  to  order  the  girl's  dismissal; 
but  the  step  had  not  brought  him  within  sight  of 
the  goal:  his  mind  remained  innocent  of  intention. 
Ashamed  to  tell  Claire  of  his  wife's  attitude,  and 
more  ashamed  to  plead  his  poverty,  or  the  stenog 
rapher's  inefficiency,  as  causes  for  her  dismissal,  he 
had  sent  her  away  with  the  feeble  pretext  that  he 
had  come  into  money  and  was  retiring  from  busi 
ness.  When  she  had  gone,  he  missed  her.  To-day 
she  was  smartly  dressed.  .  .  . 

She  was  so  secure.  There  were  no  "  nerves " 
about  her,  and,  Edith  to  the  contrary  notwithstand 
ing,  there  was  no  artifice.  She  bore  herself  with  the 
serenity  of  the  well-nurtured  animal.  The  white-and- 
pink  of  her  skin  was  as  sleek,  the  low-combed  hair, 
which  draped  her  forehead  and  hid  her  ears,  was  as 
glossy  as  the  coat  of  a  prize  King  Charles  spaniel. 

Charley's  face  softened. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said.    "  I'm  glad  to  see  you." 

He  was  glad  to  see  her.  Their  parting  had  been 
friendly.  He  had  always  liked  her  ready  sympathy 
and  quick  understanding  in  their  daily  work  to 
gether;  now  he  realized  that  he  had  also  always 
liked  to  look  at  her  firm  beauty,  her  vivacious  face, 
her  sloelike  eyes. 


358  JIM 

She  put  out  a  firm,  ungloved  hand  and  pressed  the 
hand  that  met  it. 

"How  do  you  like  being  retired?"  she  asked. 
She  had  the  phraseology  of  the  New  York  stenog 
rapher,  but  her  voice  was  a  velvet  contralto,  and  she 
accompanied  her  every  speech  with  a  direct  gaze. 

"  Well  enough,"  he  answered.  The  lie  discon 
certed  him.  "  Are  you  working  here?  " 

They  were  walking  down  the  warm  street. 

"  Oh,  no !  "  She  tossed  her  black  head.  "  I  only 
ran  in  to  see  one  of  the  girls  who's  a  friend  of  mine. 
I'm  not  working  any  more." 

He  looked  at  her  again  and  saw  that  her  clothes 
were  better  than  Edith's. 

"Married?"  he  asked. 

Her  long-lashed  eyes  sought  his  face  with  a  glance 
that  was  a  caress  and  a  tentative  invitation. 

"  No-o,"  she  slowly  answered. 

He  understood.  He  thought  of  Edith,  uptown 
there  with  Tyrrell:  Edith  alone  with  Tyrrell  in 
her  husband's  home.  Here  was  something  that,  for 
a  steady  acquaintance,  was  beyond  the  reach  of  a 
man  as  poor  as  Charley  Vanaman,  and  yet  some 
thing  for  an  evening  now  and  then,  for  a  brief  con 
solation,  for  a  forgetting  of  the  perils  that  were 
near  and  the  treacheries  that  were  being  sworn 
against  him.  Why  not?  He  had  money  left  in  his 
pocket.  It  was  Edith  who  had  opened  his  eyes  to 
this  girl's  beauty  and  then  sent  the  girl  away.  Edith, 
the  traitor,  of  all  women !  To  treat  his  wife  with 
her  own  medicine,  to  choose  this  very  girl.  .  .  . 

They  had  reached  a  corner  and  stopped  uncer 
tainly: 


JIM  359 

"  Which  is  your  way?  " 

She  nodded  northward. 
'  You're  going  home?  " 

"  I'd  meant  to.    I'm  living  with  a  friend." 

Charley  saw  again  that  her  throat  resembled 
warm  ivory,  that  her  skin  was  very  white,  her  lips 
very  red,  and  her  hair  like  a  storm-cloud.  He 
thought  again  of  Edith,  the  woman  that  had  be 
guiled  him  into  treachery  to  Jim :  Edith  with  Tyr 
rell,  tricking  her  second  husband  as  she  had  tricked 
her  first. 

"  Excuse  me  just  a  minute^"  said  Charley. 

He  darted  into  the  nearest  bar  and  bought  a  drink. 

When  he  came  back,  she  was  waiting  where  he 
had  left  her.  She  held  her  rich  body  in  a  position 
of  careless  serenity. 

"  Are  you  expected  back  soon  to  day?  "  he  asked, 
hoarsely. 

11  No,"  she  said,  "  not  to-day." 

"  Then  let's  have  an  early  dinner  together,"  he 
suggested,  "  and  first  we'll  take  a  taxi  through  the 
Park." 

Their  glances  met  again — met  and  confided. 

"  All  right,"  she  said.  .  .  . 

Charley  sent  a  messenger-boy  to  the  house.  The 
note  thus  conveyed  curtly  announced  that  he  would 
not  be  home  to  dinner,  because  business  connected 
with  the  invention  would  detain  him  downtown. 


TWENTY-THIRD  CHAPTER 

CHARLEY'S   departure    from   his   house    for 
the  offices  of  the  telegraph  company  had  not 
been  postponed  until  his  wife  and  his  guest  had 
returned  to  the  parlor.    He  left  while  they  were  still 
at  table,  and  for  some  time  after  they  heard  the 
front  door  close  upon  him,  Tyrrell  and  Edith  sat 
with  the  table  between  them. 

Their  coffee  was  unfinished;  a  bit  of  cake  lay 
beside  Edith's  cup;  there  was  a  silver-plated  plat 
ter  of  untouched  fruit  at  the  center  of  the  table, 
and  at  the  place  opposite  that  of  the  hostess  was 
Charley's  serviette,  as  he  had  dropped  it,  and  Char 
ley's  chair  pushed  back  as  he  had  pushed  it  when 
he  went  away.  The  room  was  full  of  his  memory; 
it  was  full  of  the  memory  of  Mame  and  dead  old 
man  Vanaman.  Along  quite  half  of  one  side  of 
the  room  stood  the  cumbersome  sideboard:  Vana 
man  had  bought  it  when  he  set  up  housekeeping 
with  his  wife  in  Carmel,  nearly  forty  years  ago, 
and  in  the  compartment  nearest  to  the  hall-door 
Charley  kept  his  liquor.  The  chairs  had  been  bought 
with  the  sideboard.  Charley  and  Mame  and  their 
father  had  been  using  them  thrice  daily  from  the 
date  of  their  removal  to  New  York  until  the  day  that 
the  father  was  taken  ill.  Over  Tyrrell's  head  hung 
a  print  of  one  of  Landseer's  most  sentimental  stags, 
which,  Mame  had  said,  Charley  had  given  to  his 
father  as  a  birthday  present.  The  thrifty  knives  and 

360 


JIM  361 

forks,  their  coating  of  silver  worn  away  and  showing 
the  yellow  surface  of  the  baser  metal  beneath,  were 
heavy  and  old-fashioned  and  Vanaman. 

Halfway  through  the  luncheon,  a  constrained 
silence  had  fallen  between  hostess  and  guest.  The 
burden  of  talk  had  been  placed  upon  Charley,  and, 
now  that  he  was  gone,  the  Vanamans  seemed  still 
to  demand  exclusive  attention.  They  were  palpable, 
determined:  the  pause  was  hard  to  break. 

Tyrrell  rose  and  walked  to  a  window  looking 
upon  a  narrow  plot  of  grass  that  ran  beside  the 
house,  a  bright  green  in  a  bath  of  yellow  afternoon 
sunshine.  With  his  back  partially  turned  to  the 
room,  he  lighted  and  began  slowly  to  smoke  a  cigar. 
He  had  often  smoked  when  he  was  with  Edith,  and 
must  have  known  that  she  would  not  object  to  it 
now;  but  this  was  the  first  time  he  had  done 
so  without  going  through  the  form  of  asking  her 
permission. 

Her  hands  clasped  on  the  table  before  her,  her 
coffee  forgotten,  Edith  sat  considering  his  tall,  lean 
figure  silhouetted  against  the  bright  window-pane. 
He  did,  she  reflected,  look  rather  like  Jim,  after 
all.  She  wanted  to  talk;  she  must  talk,  and  yet  she 
could  think  of  only  the  most  banal  things  to  say. 

She  asked: 

"  Is  it  going  to  rain?  " 

He  seemed  no  better-minded: 

"  No,  it's  quite  clear."    He  did  not  turn. 

"Is  it?  I  thought  this  morning  we  might  have 
some  showers." 

"  It's  quite  clear,"  he  said  again. 

He  looked  out  of  the  window.    There  was  noth- 


362  JIM 

ing  there  to  repay  a  second  glance,  but  he  kept  it 
up.  She  felt  that  he  did  not  want  to  keep  it  up, 
but  had  to. 

"  I'm  afraid,"  she  ventured,  "  this  has  all  been 
stupid  for  you." 

"  Stupid?    Oh,  no;  how  could  it  be?  " 

"How  couldn't  it?" 

He  raised  the  window  and  flung  away  the  cigar: 
she  saw  that  scarcely  half  an  inch  of  it  had  been 
burned. 

He  closed  the  window  loudly.  The  noise  seemed 
to  silence  the  clamoring  of  the  absent  Vanamans. 

"  We  can't  go  on  like  this,"  he  said. 

He  had  turned.  His  grave  but  pleasure-loving 
face  was  alight. 

"  We  can't,"  he  repeated.     "  We- 

She  saw  the  light  in  his  face.  Called  by  it,  she 
rose  and  slowly  walked  toward  him. 

"Edith!" 

He  tried  to  seize  her,  but  she  drew  aside. 
'  The   other  house — the  house  next  door,"  she 
said :  "  the  windows " 

He  followed  her  away  from  the  possibility  of 
observation  and  caught  her  in  his  arms. 

"  You  do  love  me,  dear?  "  he  asked. 

She  felt  his  hold  tighten,  not  as  it  usually  tight 
ened  in  the  dance :  more  intimately,  to  the  strains 
of  a  music  that  only  they  two  could  hear.  His 
breath  came  brokenly;  his  heart  was  pounding 
against  her  breast;  his  lips  were  on  her  mouth.  She 
could  not  breathe.  The  door  of  light  was  opened 
wide,  and,  crushed  to  him,  she  was  being  led  through 
it — through  it  as  she  had  never  been  led  before, 


JIM  363 

What  did  the  dead  or  absent  Vanamans  matter  now? 
She  gave  a  little  inarticulate  sob  and  hid  her  head 
against  his  coat. 

"  Don't  you  know?  Don't  you  know?"  she  mur 
mured. 

§2.  Theirs  was  an  impossible  position:  about 
that,  and  that  only,  Edith  was  clear.  Though  Char 
ley,  on  several  recent  occasions,  had  sullenly  submit 
ted  to  what  he  must  have  seen  to  be  love-making, 
he  was  not  likely — now  that  the  immediate  reason 
for  love-making  was,  from  his  point  of  view,  satis 
fied — to  continue  to  submit.  The  cause  of  his  acqui 
escence,  if  his  rival  so  much  as  guessed  that  there 
was  acquiescence,  stood  between  her  and  Tyrrell. 
She  knew  what  her  companion  did  not  know  and 
what  she  could  never  tell  him:  that  Charley  had 
begged  her  to  flirt — a  little — with  this  man  in  order 
to  save  her  husband  from  disgrace,  even  perhaps 
from  jail.  Tyrrell,  who  had  never  lacked  the  wealth 
to  secure  his  every  desire,  would  never  understand 
the  weak  man  that  had  been  pampered  from  child 
hood  and  now  found  himself  deprived  of  the  money 
to  prolong  the  pampering. 

Could  she  understand  him?  Ever  since,  a  few 
days  before,  Charley  had  admitted  his  dishonesty 
and,  what  was  far  worse,  demonstrated  his  want  of 
acumen  to  cover  up  his  dishonesty,  she  had  looked 
at  him  with  horrified  eyes.  His  weakness  in  ap 
pealing  to  her  had  made  matters  infinitely  worse. 
Of  all  the  failures  she  had  known  and  loathed,  her 
husband's  was  the  most  complete. 

She  did  not  blame  herself.     She  salved  her  con- 


3^4  JIM 

science  with  the  thought  that  she  had  saved  Char 
ley  financially  and  that  she  felt  a  genuine  pity  for 
him.  No,  she  was  not  at  fault:  her  "  artistic  life  " 
— the  phrase  that  she  now  employed  in  recalling 
those  days  of  uncertainty  and  over-certainty  which 
characterized  her  previous  marriage — excused  much 
that,  had  she  married  somebody  who  was  not  an 
artist,  she  would  not  have  excused  in  herself;  that 
life  had  thrust  her  into  the  arms  of  the  first  sympa 
thetic  man  who  offered,  and  Charley's  arms  had 
promised  to  be  strong,  his  sympathy  enduring.  All 
that  she  had  wanted  was  success.  With  both  hus 
bands  she  had  been  wise  enough  to  know  that  finan 
cial  independence  was  essential  to  happiness;  but 
Jim's  aunt  had  failed  to  leave  him  the  money  Edith 
expected,  and  Charley,  an  only  son  and  a  much- 
loved  son,  had  been  cut  out  of  his  rich  father's  will 
without  a  penny.  Jim  had  failed  her  by  postponing 
his  success,  if  success  it  were — she  could  not  believe 
it  would  last — until  it  was  too  late  to  benefit  her; 
Charley  had  failed  by  throwing  his  chance  of  suc 
cess  away.  Tyrrell 

She  was  still  young !  The  earlier  desires  and  the 
earlier  ambitions  were  still  in  her  blood.  She  knew 
little  enough  of  Tyrrell,  but  she  knew  that  he  loved 
her.  Tyrrell  had  money  of  which  no  one  could  de 
prive  him;  he  had  position,  he  was  a  gentleman, 
he  belonged  to  the  world  that  she  envied.  Here 
was  no  chance  of  a  third  mistake.  Here  was  pas 
sion,  to  be  sure,  but  here  also  was  tenderness  and 
devotion;  here  were  her  dreams  come  true.  She  had 
thought  that  she  was  somehow  tied  to  Charley,  that 
she  must  maintain  at  least  the  appearance  of  loy- 


JIM  365 

alty  to  him:  under  Tyrrell's  kisses  she  thought  so 
no  more.  She  even  saw  herself  married  to  Tyrrell. 
She  loved  him. 

§  3.  It  was  already  four  o'clock.  For  all  the 
world  as  if  they  had  been  child-lovers  in  one  of 
Uncle  Morty's  shifting  homes  at  Ayton,  they  were 
sitting  side  by  side,  in  the  Vanaman  parlor,  on  the 
ugly,  uncongenial  sofa  on  which,  not  so  many  days 
before,  Edith  and  Charley  had  sat  during  the  or 
deal  of  the  Zoller  interview  and  held  each  other's 
hands. 

The  door-bell  rang,  and  the  maid  brought  Edith 
a  note. 

"  Is  there  an  answer?  The  messenger-boy  didn't 
wait." 

Edith  opened  and  read  the  note. 

"  No,  there's  no  answer,"  she  said. 

The  maid  left  the  room. 

"From  him?"  inquired  Tyrrell. 

Edith  nodded: 

"  He's  detained  by  business.  It's  something  about 
the  sounder.  He  can't  be  home  till  late  to-night." 

Their  eyes  searched  one  another. 

"  Why  not  drive  in  town,"  suggested  Tyrrell, 
"  get  a  cocktail  somewhere,  and  have  a  little  din 
ner  together?  There's  no  reason  for  you  to  stay 
here — in  this  stuffy  house." 

There  seemed  indeed  no  reason  to  stay,  and  cer 
tainly  no  chance  of  detection  if  she  went. 

Yet  Edith  hesitated.  Tyrrell  had  said  he  loved 
her:  that  changed  everything.  She  did  not  know 
him  well  enough  to  know  how  much  she  could  give 


366  JIM 

him  without  losing  all  hope  of  return.     When  love 

has  been  confessed,   a  little  dinner  is  a  dangerous 

thing. 

'  You  don't  know  how  angry  he  would  be  if— 
"  But  how  can  he?     You'll  be  back  before  ten 

o'clock;  we  can  dine  early.     At  least,  we  shall  be 

together." 

She  remembered  a  song  Jim  used  to  sing — Jim, 

who  never  followed  its  advice: 

Take  what  you  can  and  can  what  you  can't — 
But  take  what  you  can  when  you  can,  dear. 

Why  not  snatch  at  happiness — now?  Charley  had 
been  really  none  the  wiser  for  the  luncheon;  why 
should  he  learn  of  the  dinner? 

"  I  must  dress " 

"  No,"  he  said.  "  We  can  go  to  some  quiet  place. 
It's  better  not,  I  think." 

She  agreed  with  him,  and  Edith  was  amazed  to 
find  herself  trusting  to  a  man's  judgment. 

"  All  right,"  she  said,  and  went  from  the  room 
to  search  for  her  hat  and  gloves.  She  was  singing 
softly  as  she  went.  She  had  not  sung  to  herself 
more  than  once  or  twice  since — since  she  left  Jim. 

§  4.  There  was  plenty  of  time — indeed,  too  much. 
So,  when  they  saw  a  hansom  with  its  sad  cab-horse 
waiting  for  fares,  Tyrrell  hailed  it,  and  they  started 
down  Fifth  Avenue,  hand  in  hand  behind  the  shelter 
of  its  little  doors. 

"  It's  so  much  more  fun,"  Tyrrell  had  explained 
with  a  boyishness  that  charmed  her  and  that  she 
had  not  dreamed  of  finding  in  him.  "  There's  no 


JIM  367 

romance  in  a  taxi.    Any  sort  of  passion  can  ride  in 
a  taxi;  but  in  a  hansom  only  Love  can  ride." 

Again  the  Avenue,  its  shop-windows  glittering  and 
luring,  was  filled  by  that  happy  crowd  which  had 
filled  it  on  the  afternoon  when,  hopeless  and  envi 
ous,  she  passed  along  it  on  her  unguessing  way  to 
meet  the  man  that  now  sat  beside  her  and  made 
her  belong  to  it.  She  could  not  now  look  for  faces 
familiar  to  her  from  the  society  pages  in  the  news 
papers'  Sunday  supplements,  and  had  she  looked  she 
would  soon  have  remembered  that  the  people  of  the 
society  pages  were  away  for  the  Summer — would 
have  realized  that  the  replacing  throng  was  a  throng 
of  counterfeits  and  imitations.  Her  sense  of  hap 
piness  was  too  great.  She  saw  the  crowds  only  as 
a  brilliant  mist.  For  her  they  were  all  what  they 
had  been  on  that  other  afternoon,  and  she,  thanks 
to  Tyrrell,  was  one  of  them.  She  breathed  the  at 
mosphere  of  carelessness,  of  luxurious  freedom  from 
debt  and  from  counting  the  cost,  and  it  was  as  the 
air  of  Lautaret  to  a  citizen  of  Amsterdam.  She  be 
longed  to  this  life,  and  this  life  belonged  to  her. 

At  Thirty-fourth  Street  the  traffic  was  retarded 
by  a  policeman  for  three  or  four  minutes.  Edith  saw 
an  inquiring  head  thrust  out  of  a  taxicab  win 
dow.  There  was  no  mistaking:  it  was  Charley's. 

She  clutched  Tyrrell's  hand  convulsively:  Tyrrell 
was  looking  in  the  opposite  direction.  If  he  had 
seen,  he  gave  no  sign;  but  Charley  had  seen:  Edith 
convinced  herself  of  that.  When  their  hansom 
passed  the  taxi,  Edith,  her  eyes  fascinated,  looked 
within.  Charley  was  not  alone;  beside  him,  on  the 
farther  side,  sat  a  robust  girl,  of  warm  ivory  and 


368  JIM 

healthy  pink,  with  jet-black  hair  draped  low  over 
her  broad  forehead  and  coiled  tight  over  her  ears — 
the  stenographer  whom  Edith  had  forced  him  to 
discharge.  Charley  was  not  now  looking  out  of 
the  window;  he  was  not  looking  at  Edith.  Indeed, 
his  broad  back  was  turned,  as  if  to  protect  his  com 
panion  from  her  possible  gaze. 

Edith  turned  to  Tyrrell. 

"  Bob,"  she  said,  "  don't  you  think  the  driver 
could  get  a  little  more  speed  out  of  this  animal  of 
ours?" 


TWENTY-FOURTH  CHAPTER 

SHE  reached  home  before  Charley:  few  scant 
minutes  before.  She  made  Tyrrell  drop  her 
at  the  door. 

"  No,"  she  said,  composedly  enough;  "  don't  come 
in.  I  want  to  be  alone  for  a  little  while.  I  want 
to  think  things  over." 

Had  he  seen  what  she  had  seen?  She  did  not 
know.  She  wished  Tyrrell  were  a  little  less  the 
gentleman — enough  less  to  have  commented  on  that 
glimpse  of  Charley  if,  indeed,  the  glimpse  had  come 
to  him — but  she  knew  him  to  be  the  sort  that,  see 
ing  such  a  thing,  would  seem  not  to  see  it,  would 
scorn  to  justify  his  course  by  any  course  which  the 
husband  of  the  woman  he  loved  might  elect  to  fol 
low.  So  she  said  good-night  and  went  indoors, 
where,  a  prey  to  emotions  that  she  resolutely  re 
fused  to  analyze,  she  waited  for  Charley. 

She  went  into  the  parlor  and  lighted  every  gas-jet 
— this  woman  that  once  wanted  the  darkness  for 
thought.  She  paced  up  and  down  the  room  like  a 
caged  animal — like  Charley,  on  the  day  when  he 
waited  for  Mame  to  bring  him  word  of  his  father's 
business  with  Zoller  from  his  father's  sickroom. 

How  was  she  to  act?  She  did  not  want  to  know 
how  she  was  to  reason:  she  asked  how  she  was  to 
act.  This  moment  was,  somehow,  her  chance — but 
how?  Rightly  seized,  the  opportunity  meant  free 
dom  from  Charley,  from  debt  and  poverty,  and 

369 


370  JIM 

drunkenness  and  lies:  freedom  to  go  to  Tyrrell  and 
success;  to  pass  through  the  lighted  door. 

What  hampered  her  was  a  genuine  anger,  that 
reasonless  anger  which  is  the  fiercest,  against  the 
man  who  was  still  her  husband.  He  had  tricked  her 
and  betrayed  her.  He  had  done  it  meanly  and  clum 
sily  as  he  did  everything  else,  and  his  discovery  had 
left  him  with  no  rag  of  his  boasting  to  cover  the 
unwholesome  truth  of  his  real  personality;  she  saw 
him  as  undeserving  even  the  false  loyalty  of  pre 
tended  affection  and  forced  adherence:  weak,  sod 
den,  a  liar,  and  a  failure.  She  had  been  a  fool 
to  try  to  save  him:  he  would  let  the  fruits  of  this 
rescue  slip  through  his  fingers  as  he  had  let  slip 
through  them  everything  else  worth  while  that  his 
undeserved  good  luck  had  ever  placed  in  his  greedy, 
incompetent  hands. 

They  were  safe  from  immediate  financial  ruin. 
No  sooner  had  Tyrrell  signed  that  check  which 
saved  Charley,  than,  her  duty  performed,  she  be 
gan  to  feel  what  now  she  felt:  the  sight  of  her  hus 
band  in  the  cab  with  that  French  girl  had  completed 
the  change.  She  should  have  been  prepared  for 
this.  Charley  had  cheated  Jim:  of  course  he  would 
cheat  his  wife.  She  ought  to  have  trusted  her  earlier 
instincts.  She  had  been  right,  all  along,  in  her  sus 
picions:  Charley  had  deceived  her  into  bearing  pov 
erty,  forced  her  into  submission  to  his  insults,  put 
upon  her  the  snubs  of  her  acquaintances,  wheedled 
her  into  lying  for  him,  set  her  to  washing  his  dishes, 
darning  his  socks,  while  he  had  been  spending  on 
other  women  the  money  that  her  economies  saved. 
How  long  and  with  how  many  had  it  not  been  go- 


JIM  37i 

ing  on?  And  he  had  implored  her  to  save  him — 
for  this  stenographer:  implored  his  wife  to  save  him 
for  his  mistress.  He  had  sold  her  for  his  paltry 
safety:  worse  than  that,  for  his  low  pleasures.  He 
sat  through  these  past  days,  through  this  last  lunch 
eon,  looking  on  while  the  purchase  was  completed; 
he  left  her  to  consummate  the  sale  while  he  ran 
off  to  pay  his  foreign  woman.  To  think  that  she 
could  ever  have  contemplated  continuing  to  live 
with  him! 

So  far  as  her  relations  with  Charley  were  con 
cerned,  Love  for  him,  in  the  finest  sense  of  that  word, 
had  left  her  as  long  ago  as  it  left  him.  With  her, 
too,  there  had  been  the  partial  returns,  each  lesser 
than  the  preceding;  with  her,  too,  the  final  cessa 
tion,  the  substituting  of  a  passionate  counterfeit,  it 
self  retreating  and  advancing  until  it  should  retreat 
forever.  The  lies  bred  of  their  first  clandestine 
communion  had  done  for  her  what  they  did  for  him. 
What  was  left  of  her  was  what  he  now  struck: 
her  perverted  conventional  pride  as  a  wife,  the 
shapeless  nothing  that  women  of  her  early  training 
consider  as  faith  in  their  husband's  fidelity  and  cling 
to  as  if  it  were  their  own  honor,  however  unfaith 
ful  they  themselves  may  be :  tenderer  than  love,  more 
easily  hurt,  eager  to  press  into  its  own  bosom  every 
possible  sword. 

If  she  loved  Tyrrell,  it  was  Charley  who  had 
forced  her  to  it,  begged  it  with  tears  and  almost 
on  his  knees.  He  had  taught  her  dishonor  by  teach 
ing  her  to  help  him  in  cheating  her  first  husband. 
Jim  had  been  right  in  scorning  this  creature.  She 
remembered  a  score  of  light  words  that  Jim  had 


372  JIM 

occasionally  let  fall  concerning  Charley;  she  applied 
them  herself;  she  found  them  lashing  her  forward 
as  no  words  of  her  own  that  she  could  find. — And 
now  Charley  was  playing  on  her  the  same  trick 
he  had  once  inveighd  her  into  playing  on  Jim. 

But  how  to  act?  That  was  what  she  must  de 
cide:  how  to  act.  Her  resolution  reeled.  She  had 
reached  no  conclusion  when  Charley  came  in. 

§  2.  He  came  in  almost  at  once :  all  that  she  had 
felt,  she  felt  in  the  course  of  a  few  hurrying  min 
utes.  Frightened  by  the  encounter  at  Thirty-fourth 
Street  and  angry  because  of  it,  Charley  had  left 
Claire  after  the  dinner  that  he  had  promised  her 
and  had  then  fortified  himself  with  an  unusual  quan 
tity  of  liquor. 

He  stood  glaring  at  Edith,  his  froglike  eyes  bulg 
ing  over  black  bags  of  unhealthy  skin;  the  loose  gray 
skin  of  his  cheeks  trembled  at  the  twitching  of  the 
facial  muscles  deep  beneath  it:  she  saw  him  a  traitor, 
a  failure,  a  weakling.  She  faced  him,  arrested  in 
her  pacing  of  the  brightly  lighted  room,  her  brown 
eyes  angry  beacons,  her  face  hardened,  the  paint 
on  her  cheeks  like  daubs  of  vermilion  on  a  white 
washed  wall:  he  saw  her  a  traitor,  a  common  scold, 
a  loose  woman. 

Her  first  words  came  from  her  without  an  instant 
of  reflection: 

"  Well,"  she  sneered,  "  I  hope  you  were  success 
ful  in  the  business  that  kept  you  downtown." 

Her  tone  allowed  him  no  chance  to  hope  that  she 
had  not  seen.  He  walked  up  to  her. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  was  successful.    I  went  in  for 


JIM  373 

that  business  because  I  saw  you  were  going  in  for 
the  same  sort  of  thing." 

The  same  sort  of  thing!  He  could  compare  his 
excursion  in  the  company  of  a  stenographer  with 
the  idyl  of  which  she  had  been  a  part !  She  thought 
of  the  grace  and  charm  and  love  of  Tyrrell;  of  the 
awkward  vulgarity  and  lust  of  Charley  and  his  mis 
tress.  Her  cheeks  now  burned  with  a  natural  red. 

'  You  never  saw  anything  of  the  sort,"  she  said. 

"  I  saw  you  in  that  hansom  with  Tyrrell." 

"  What  if  you  did?  What  if  you  did?  You  sent 
home  word  you  weren't  to  be  here — you  sent  home 
that  lie  about  business;  couldn't  I  go  out  to  dinner 
with  your  friend  and  have  nothing  said  about  it?  " 

"My  friend?" 

"  He's  the  best  friend  you've  got."  She  stood 
with  her  fists  clenched  at  her  sides.  "  He's  kept 
you  out  of  jail  to-day." 

"  Well,  don't  pretend  it  was  only  a  dinner  en 
gagement.  I  saw  the  way  you  two  were  looking 
at  each  other  when  I  came  in  for  lunch.  I  saw  the 

way  you  looked  when  I  had  to  leave  you "     He 

choked. 

She  wanted  to  tell  this  man  that  she  hated  him 
and  all  the  dreadful  reasons  for  her  hatred,  and  yet, 
because  she  remained  only  a  conventional  woman 
who  did  unconventional  things,  she  still  more  wanted 
to  preserve  her  conventional  honor. 

"  You  told  me  I  was  to  flirt  with  him,"  she  said. 

"  I  did  not." 

"  You  did.    You  told  me  to,  and  you  know  it." 

"  I  said  you  might  do  it  if  there  wasn't  any  other 
way." 


374  JIM 

"Why  don't  you  finish  it?  You  mean  if  there 
wasn't  any  other  way  for  me  to  get  money  out  of 
him  for  you." 

"  All  right,  Edith.  Put  it  however  you  like.  I 
don't  care." 

"  Well,  there  wasn't  any  other  way." 

"Did  you  look  for  one?" 

"  Yes,  I  did." 

"  Very  well.  But  what  I  said  was  '  flirt  a  lit 
tle.'  I  didn't  say  you  were  to " 

"  Go  out  to  dinner  with  him?  Where  is  the 
harm  in  that?  " 

"  You  know  what  I  mean." 

"  I  know  what  you  did.  I  know  what  you've  been 
doing.  You've  been  running  around  town  with  com 
mon  women.  You've  been  carrying  on  with  that 
painted  French  girl 

"  Just  a  moment,  please.    I " 

"  Don't  use  that  phrase,  '  Just  a  moment ' :  it  sets 
me  wild.  I  tell  you  you've  been  carrying  on  with 
that  painted  French " 

11  Edith !  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  you  have !  Don't  try  to  lie  any  more 
to  me.  That  low  stenographer  that  you  promised  to 
discharge " 

"  I  did  discharge  her." 

"  From  that  place,  yes,"  said  Edith.  Her  nos 
trils  dilated.  "  And  then  you  gave  her  another  sort 
of  job.  You  promoted  her!  " 

The  difference  between  them  was  this :  that  Edith 
was,  at  least  for  the  time,  in  love  with  Tyrrell, 
whereas  Charley,  though  he  admired  Claire,  had 
recognized  at  the  outset  that  she  was  too  expensive 


JIM  375 

a  luxury  for  his  permanent  possession,  felt  her  some 
thing  that  was  only  passing,  and  frankly  admitted 
as  much  both  to  himself  and  to  the  girl.  He  could 
therefore  bear  any  insult  aimed  at  Claire,  but  must 
resent,  if  he  was  to  maintain  the  conventional  hus 
band's  upper  hand,  any  suspicion  of  his  own  conduct. 

"  I  never  did  anything  of  the  sort,"  he  said. 
'  You  must  think  you  leave  me  money  to  spare. 
Till  to-night  I  haven't  seen  her  since  I  fired  her." 

Edith  sniffed. 

"That's  a  likely  story!" 

"  It's  the  true  one." 

"  Then,  why  did  you  send  home  that  lie  about 
business?  You  haven't  business  enough  to  keep  you 
busy  during  the  day.  You  never  did  like  to  work, 
and  you  never  have  worked.  You've  always  lived 
on  somebody  else,  and  of  course  you've  been  see 
ing  this  French  girl  while  you  pretended  to  be  at 
your  office." 

"Nonsense;  how'd  I  get  the  money?" 

"  The  way  you  got  the  other  money,  I  suppose. 
it,  or " 


"  I  tell  you,  it's  not  true.  I  was  kept  downtown 
on  business  as  I  said  I'd  be,  and  on  the  way  up  I 
happened  to  meet  Miss  Girodet— 

"  And  I  suppose  she  stopped  her  motor-car  and 
told  her  chauffeur  to  get  down  and  call  you  over 
and  offer  to  drive  you  home?" 

"  No.     Just  a  moment,  please.     As  I  was  say- 


mg- 


"  Oh,"  Edith  broke  out,  "  I  told  you  not  to  use 
that  phrase,  and  I  don't  care  what  you  were  say 
ing!  I'm  going  to  bed."  She  started  toward  the 


376  JIM 

door,  deciding  to  shut  herself  in  a  spare  bedroom 
and  determine  her  course  of  action;  but  she  flung  one 
more  word  at  him:  "I  know  what  you've  been 
doing,  and  that's  enough  for  me !  " 

Rage  boiled  up  in  him.  His  accidental  innocence 
righteously  protested;  but  he  could  not  prove  his 
innocence.  He  felt  she  had  tricked  him  to  the  end, 
even  to  this  mere  detail  of  somehow  capturing  and 
maintaining  the  role  of  the  injured  party,  when,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  she  had  betrayed  him  to  Tyrrell. 
That  he,  the  husband,  had  contemplated  betraying 
her  no  longer  counted  with  him.  He  felt  only  that 
he  must  gain  the  mastery. 

"  Stop!  "  he  cried:  it  was  his  old  command.  He 
caught  her  arm  and  flung  her  around  until,  panting 
from  pain,  she  once  more  faced  him.  "  I  won't  have 
this.  We've  got  to  be  honest  with  each  other  once 
and  for  all.  I  know  how  far  you've  gone  with  Tyr 
rell — I  know  it  as  well  as  if  I'd  seen  it;  and  you 
can't  say  anything  that'll  make  me  believe  anything 
else."  The  sound  of  his  words  whipped  his  anger. 
"  I  know  what  your  game  is.  You're  in  love  with 
him.  You've  ruined  me.  You  made  me  a  per 
jurer  in  that  case  against  Jim,  and  now  you're  cook 
ing  up  the  same  sort  of  a  scheme  with  Tyrrell 
against  me!  " 

His  grasp  hurt  her,  and  the  hurt  tore  away  the 
last  vestige  of  her  caution. 

"  Made  a  perjurer  of  you !  "  she  yelled.  Her 
voice  rasped.  Her  lips  were  twisted  with  suffering, 
mental  and  physical.  "  You  jumped  at  the  chance. 
You  were  born  a  crook.  Don't  you  put  on  moral 
airs  to  me !  I  know  you !  You've  cheated  your  sis- 


JIM  377 

ter.  You're  nothing  but  a  thief!  Do  you  hear — 
a  common  thief!  Why  don't  you  answer?  Jim? 
He  was  fifty  times  more  of  a  man  than  you!" 

She  was  tugging  at  the  hand  that  held  her.  At 
the  mention  of  Jim,  Charley  suddenly  released  his 
hold,  and  she  tottered  back. 

There  surged  to  the  surface  of  his  consciousness 
all  the  venom  that  had  been  brewing  in  his  brain 
since  the  day  when  he  first  conspired  with  her  against 
Jim, — the  venom  from  all  the  consequent  poverty, 
debauchery,  deceit, — and  he  spewed  it  out. 

"  You're  in  love  with  Jim!  "  he  shouted.  "  That's 
what's  the  matter  with  you,  you  old  cat — older  than 
I  am  and  older  than  he  is.  And  what  I  got  when 
I  got  you  was  what  he'd  used  up  and  wanted  to  throw 
away!  " 

His  jealousy  sickened  her;  it  spoiled  everything 
that  it  touched.  She  had  but  one  thought :  to  stop  the 
dirty  tide  of  his  speech;  but  one  desire:  to  dam  the 
foul  flood  of  his  accusation — and  yet  it  ran  on  and 
on,  giving  her  no  chance  to  answer.  He  barred  her 
way  to  the  door  and  allowed  her  no  opportunity 
for  retreat. 

"  Jim,  Jim,  Jim !  You've  got  to  quit  thinking 
about  him.  By  God,  you've  got  to  quit  thinking  about 
him!  I  know  what  you  are,  and  I'm  going  to  tell 
you." 

He  burst  into  an  insane  fit  of  denunciation,  ridi 
cule,  reproach.  It  flung  garbage,  offal,  crawling  car 
rion.  It  was  like  the  opening  of  a  sewer-tap.  The 
brutalities  of  business,  the  vulgarities  of  the  street, 
the  sweepings  of  low  barrooms,  the  scourings  of 
slums  and  stews  roared  from  his  lips  and  deluged 


378  JIM 

her.  They  seemed  to  spatter  the  very  walls  of  the 
Vanaman  parlor.  They  beat  on  her,  submerged  her. 
To  have  to  listen  was  to  be  defiled.  There  was  no 
vileness  with  which  he  did  not  charge  her,  no  vi 
cious  bond  with  which  he  did  not  lash  her  to  Jim, 
to  Tyrrell,  to  persons  suspected  and  persons  un 
known — but  most  of  all  to  Jim. 

Then  he  stopped  in  the  midst  of  a  sentence,  struck 
her  full  across  the  face,  and,  as  she  fell,  rushed  out 
of  the  room. 

§  3.  Under  the  blaze  of  the  lights,  Edith  lay  on 
the  floor.  She  was  partially  stunned  by  her  fall, 
and  nearly  fainting  from  the  exhaustion  following 
her  war  of  emotions;  but  she  heard  her  husband  go 
into  the  dining-room.  She  heard  him  open  the  com 
partment  in  the  sideboard  where  his  whisky  was  kept. 
She  heard  the  clinking  of  a  glass  against  a  bottle. 
Then  she  heard  him  repass  down  the  hall  by  the 
parlor,  without  pausing  to  look  in,  and  climb  the 
stairs  to  their  bedroom. 

She  heard  what  would  happen  now.  He  was  tak 
ing  a  bottle  and  glass  to  bed  with  him:  he  would 
nurse  his  anger  upon  liquor  until  he  had  drunk  him 
self  into  a  stupor.  Yet  now  it  came  to  her  in  a  flash 
that  this  was  no  longer  anything  to  dread.  That 
bottle  which,  in  the  deepest  sense,  Jim  had  placed 
in  Charley's  hand,  took  Charley  out  of  her  way  at 
the  moment  when  her  decision  waited  only  on  his 
absence.  It  became  only  something  to  use  for  the 
present  occasion — to  use  in  order  that  she  might 
be  done  with  it  forever. 

She  lay  quiet  on  the  floor.     She  waited  until  she 


JIM  379 

was  certain  he  would  be  too  drunk  to  hear  her  mov 
ing  about,  or,  hearing,  interfere.  Once  convinced 
of  this,  she  went  softly  upstairs  and,  a  little  later, 
softly  left  the  house. 

From  the  next  house  there  came  a  light  and  the 
sound  of  hoarse  music.  A  music-machine  was  play 
ing  "  Too  Much  Mustard."  Edith  stopped  an  in 
voluntary  moment  to  listen,  and  then  went  on  her 
way. 

She  was  going  toward  the  door  of  light,  toward 
the  Fifth  Avenue  of  half-past  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  toward  Romance  and  Love  and  Success. 
She  had  turned  her  back  on  Failure.  She  was  going 
to  the  man  that  was  so  unlike  Charley;  she  was 
going  to  the  man  that  had  once  or  twice  reminded 
her  of  Jim. 


TWENTY-FIFTH  CHAPTER 

CHARLEY  was  wakened  by  the  hot  light  of  a 
late  summer  mid-morning  pouring  in  at  the 
window  of  the  bedroom,  which  he  had  for 
gotten  to  open,  and  beating  on  his  face.  The  room 
stank;  there  was  a  buzzing  of  flies.  He  raised  his 
head,  but  quickly  lowered  it:  his  head  was  full  of 
sledge-hammers  that  beat  outward  on  his  skull.  The 
bed  seemed  to  pitch  and  sway.  He  turned  his  aching 
eyes  to  right  and  left:  there  was  no  sign  of  Edith. 
Then  he  longed  for  water  and  knew  that  it  would 
sicken  him  again,  and  quailed  at  the  thought  of  a 
drink  of  whisky,  knowing  that,  if  he  could  force 
it  down  his  throat,  it  would  strengthen  him.  He 
must  have  one  drink  of  it — just  one  drink — to  steady 
his  nerves  and  still  that  banging  agony  in  his  head. 
Painfully,  slowly,  he  groped  for  the  bottle  on  the 
floor  beside  the  bed:  the  bottle  was  empty. 

That  effort  and  its  failure  were  almost  too  much 
for  him.  He  sank  back  with  a  groan  upon  his  heated 
pillow.  The  pillow  was  rank  with  the  sweat  of  the 
drunkard.  He  had  seen,  in  raising  his  head,  enough 
of  the  room  to  know  that  it  was  in  a  frightful  con 
dition.  He  closed  his  eyes.  For  half  an  hour  he 
lay  still,  trying  to  summon  the  resolution  to  move 
again.  Slowly,  the  events  of  yesterday,  the  wrangle 
of  last  night,  the  memory  of  the  blow,  came  back 
to  him. 

380 


JIM  38i 

He  swore  heavily.  At  last  he  got  up  and  stood 
clutching  the  bedpost. 

"Edith!  "he  called. 

There  was  no  answer. 

He  went  to  the  door  and  opened  it,  meaning  to 
call  to  her  from  the  hall  and  have  her  fetch  him  some 
whisky,  but  on  the  threshold  was  a  bit  of  paper  that 
held  his  attention.  He  saw  it  was  a  letter  addressed 
to  him  in  Edith's  hand.  He  stooped  dizzily  for  it, 
shut  his  eyes,  groped,  lurched,  and  got  it  as  he 
sprawled  forward  on  the  floor.  He  opened  the 
envelope  with  palsied  fingers.  It  contained  a  half 
sheet  of  note-paper  covered  with  hurried  lines. 
Kneeling,  he  read: 

"  After  what  you  have  done  to  me,  of  course  you 
can't  ever  expect  to  see  me  again.  A  beating  isn't 
ground  for  divorce  in  this  state,  but  I  know  enough 
now  to  know  there's  plenty  of  other  evidence  of  the 
right  sort,  and  if  you're  one-half  as  brave  as  Jim 
was,  you  won't  stand  in  the  way.  As  soon  as  I've 
seen  my  lawyer  I'll  have  him  telephone  you." 

He  made  no  audible  comment:  he  merely  strug 
gled  into  his  clothes.  There  was  still  a  little  whisky 
downstairs;  he  drank  it  and,  with  that  heavy  on 
his  breath,  set  forth  for  the  offices  of  the  telegraph 
company  in  which  lay  the  last  hope  of  the  Vana- 
man  Sounder. 

A  half  hour  later,  he  was  a  ruined  man.  The 
second  vice-president  had  spared  enough  time  from 
his  few  hours  of  work  to  end  an  office-nuisance:  he 
demonstrated  to  Charley  beyond  the  last  shadow 
of  doubt  that  the  Vanaman  Sounder  infringed  upon 


382  'JIM 

a  patent  secured  long  before  the  date  of  his  inven 
tion,  but  only  recently  put  into  use,  by  a  rival  tele 
graph  corporation.  .  .  . 

He  could  not  get  drunk.  He  drank  steadily, 
seated  alone  in  his  miserable  office  with  the  sounder 
grinning  at  him  from  the  table;  but  the  more  he 
drank,  the  clearer  his  brain  became,  the  sharper 
the  outlines  of  the  things  he  wanted  to  forget. 

Edith  was  gone.  She  was  gone  to  Tyrrell. 
There  was  the  hideous  shame  of  that:  little  of  the 
pain  of  it,  but  a  shame  the  greater  because  it  had 
to  itself  the  field  which  it  might  have  had  to  share 
with  the  pain.  His  wife  had  inflicted  on  him  what 
he  considered  the  last  marital  dishonor  and,  in  do 
ing  this,  had  linked  him,  in  the  world's  eyes,  with 
Jim  whom,  for  this  same  dishonor,  Charley  had  so 
long  despised.  Edith  had  written  "  Cuckold  "  all 
across  the  page  of  his  domestic  life. 

The  sounder  was  a  leering  ruin.  The  years  of 
thought  that  he  had  given  it,  the  hopes  that  he  had 
built  on  it,  the  sleepless  nights  and  the  days  of  toil, 
the  money  spent,  the  debts  incurred,  the  crimes  com 
mitted  for  it,  profited  him  nothing.  The  rival  in 
vention  predated  him  so  obviously  that  he  would 
have  no  chance  to  fight  it  through  a  long  patent  liti 
gation,  even  if  he  had  the  money.  How  the  patent 
office  had  failed  to  discover  his  infringement  long 
ago  and  notified  him  at  the  beginning  he  could  not 
guess;  he  knew  that  such  mistakes  did  sometimes 
occur  and  he  had  to  acknowledge  that  this  was  one 
of  them.  He  seized  the  model  instrument  from  the 
office-table  and  ripped  it  to  pieces  with  his  bare 
hands. 


JIM  383 

He  was  a  thief  in  imminent  danger  of  detection 
and  arrest.  He  had  stolen  from  Tyrrell  through 
misrepresentation  and  from  his  sister  outright.  The 
Tyrrell  theft  might  be  explained  even  now,  and,  in 
any  event,  its  victim  would  not  dare  to  prosecute — 
that  was  the  one  gray  ray  of  light — but  Zoller 
would.  Except  for  the  check  that  Tyrrell  had  given 
him — the  price,  he  bitterly  reflected,  of  his  honor — 
he  was  penniless. 

Again  he  telephoned  to  Mame,  but  again  a  voice 
that  must  have  been  Mrs.  Hamilton's  informed  him 
that  she  was  not  to  be  seen;  it  directed  him  to 
Zoller.  He  went  to  Mrs.  Hamilton's  apartments, 
but  the  maid  left  him  at  the  door  and  presently  re 
turned  to  him  with  this  note  from  his  sister: 

"  DEAR  BROTHER,— 

"  I  extremely  regret  that,  under  advice  of  counsel, 
it  will  be  impossible  for  me  to  see  you  or  again 
communicate  with  you  in  any  form,  pending  your 
rendering  to  me,  through  my  attorney,  a  satisfactory 
accounting  in  the  matter  of  our  father's  estate. 
"  Your  affectionate  sister, 

"  MARY  L.  VANAMAN." 

Charley  crumpled  the  letter  in  his  fist.  One  or 
two  faint  touches  showed  the  softening  influence  of 
his  sister's  character  as  he  had  known  it  in  years 
gone  by,  but  all  of  the  tenor,  and  much  of  the  phrase 
ology,  were  unmistakably  Zoller's. 

He  thought  of  checking  out  more  of  Mame's 
money  and  running  away  with  it;  but  he  was  too 
much  afraid  of  her  lawyer  and  too  much  afraid 
to  be  alone.  No,  there  was  only  one  thing  to  be 


384  JIM 

done :  Charley  must  make  his  accounting.  The  dan 
ger  of  jail  was  far  keener  than  the  shame  of  Edith's 
conduct,  sharp  as  that  shame  was;  the  threat  of  im 
prisonment — although  it  did  not  emanate  from 
Mame,  and  might  yet,  by  Mame,  be  diverted — was 
worse  than  the  threat  of  penury. 

He  went  back  to  his  office  and  fell  to  work.  His 
peculations  from  his  father's  estate  would  be  cov 
ered,  but  not  much  more  than  covered,  by  the  pro 
ceeds  of  Tyrrell's  check.  He  used  it  for  that  pur 
pose  and,  just  as  the  grim  little  Zoller  was  about 
to  leave  for  home,  Charley  reached  that  attorney's 
stuffy  workshop. 

§  2.  "  Very  well,"  said  Zoller,  after  one  of  the 
most  uncomfortable  hours  that  Charley  had  ever 
passed.  '  The  bank-books  of  course  have  to  be  bal 
anced,  but  so  far  as  I  can  tab  them  up  by  these  stubs, 
they  agree  with  your  accounting.  I  don't  pretend  to 
understand  these  entries  " — a  thin  forefinger  pointed 
to  the  record  of  the  checks  drawn  by  Charley  for 
his  own  uses  and  clumsily  explained — "  but  the  de 
posit  made  to-day  covers  those  amounts." 

The  words  were  an  acquittal,  but  the  way 
that  Zoller's  mouth  snapped  shut  when  he  had 
ended  them  was  more  like  an  announcement  of 
conviction. 

Charley  wiped  the  sweat  from  his  forehead. 

"Will  you  let  me  see  Mame  now?"  he  asked. 

"  I  have  here,"  said  Zoller,  with  splendid  preci 
sion  drawing  the  one  paper  that  he  wanted  from  the 
bundle  on  his  desk,  "  a  formal  rescinding  of  your 
appointment  and  power-of-attorney,  signed  by  your 


JIM  385 

sister.     She  has  decided  to  nominate  me  as  your 


successor." 


;' Will  you  let  me  see  Mame  now?"  Charley 
repeated. 

"  After  I  have  given  her  some  advice  over  the 
telephone,"  said  Zoller. 

§  3.  Charley  sat  on  the  Chippendale  chair  from 
Grand  Rapids  in  the  quinquilateral  parlor  of  Mrs. 
Hamilton's  flat.  He  was  here  to  beg  Mame  to  go 
back  home  and  to  take  him  with  her.  He  had  one 
faint  hope :  the  hope  that  he  might  induce  her  to  set 
him  up  in  some  small  business;  but  he  was,  above 
all,  seeking  an  asylum — and  yet  he  was  afraid  to 
face  her.  Through  all  the  years  when  her  refusal 
meant  nothing  to  him,  she  had  never  refused  him. 
This  evening,  and  he  knew  it,  he  must  confront  a 
new  Mame.  Nothing  was  his,  everything  hers.  If 
she  denied  him  now,  who  had  not  once  denied  him 
while  their  father  lived,  she  would  be  denying  him 
food  and  shelter:  his  very  bread  and  butter  depended 
on  the  will  of  the  sister  he  had  always  scorned. 

"  Good-evening,  Charley." 

She  stood  in  the  doorway,  dressed  in  a  formless 
black  gown  of  some  cheap  material,  her  myopic  eyes 
peering  through  her  thick  spectacles,  but  with  what 
his  timid  imagination  interpreted  as  a  strange  firm 
ness  about  her  once  vacuous  face. 

He  staggered  to  his  feet.  "  Mame,"  he  said: 
"  Dear  Mame,"  and,  his  whole  figure  expressing 
penitence  and  despair,  he  began  to  sob  out  his  story 
to  her,  like  a  naughty  child  entangled  beyond  hope 
of  evasion  and  seeing  safety  only  in  confession  at 


386  JIM 

the  parental  knee.  He  told  her  everything — every 
thing,  that  is,  but  his  own  dishonesty. 

She  heard  him  through  without  comment.  When 
he  had  finished  she  said: 

"  It's  just  about  what  I  expected  of  her,  but  I 
must  say  I  didn't  expect  it  of  you,  Charley." 

"  Me?  "    He  didn't  in  the  least  comprehend. 

11  Yes,  you,  Charley." 

"  But  it  was  Edith.  Haven't  I  just  been  telling 
you?  Edith's  gone  and  run  away  to  this  Tyrrell 
fellow."  He  began  to  guess  that  she  suspected. 
"  What  have  /  done?  "  he  asked. 

Mame's  face  became  as  grave  as  such  a  face  can 
become. 

4  You  know,"  she  said. 

''What  do  you  mean?  What  do  you  mean? 
Mame,  do  you  mean  to  say  you  think  I  took  your 
money?  " 

He  had  let  it  out  before  she  became  specific, 
but  that  mattered  little :  there  is  no  betraying  a  dem 
onstrated  fact. 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Mame. 

"  Mame,  how  dare  you?"  He  tried  to  bluster 
and  then  caught  the  fixity  of  her  pale  eyes.  "  Your 
own  brother !  "  he  sobbed. 

"  It's  no  use,  Charley."  She  shook  her  head.  It 
was  a  head  slow  to  grasp,  but  stubbornly  retentive. 
"  Mr.  Zoller  telephoned  while  you  were  on  your  way 
here." 

Charley  argued;  he  declared  that  Zoller,  even  if 
prompted  by  the  best  of  motives  toward  his  client, 
could  not  be  sure.  He  explained  his  expenditures 


JIM  387 

in  half  a  dozen  conflicting  ways.     He  wept.     But 
Mame  had  only  one  sadly  monotonous  reply: 

"  Mr.  Zoller  knows." 

'The  accounts  are  square!"  cried  Charley. 
"  Even  if  I  did  use  some  of  the  money,  it's  paid  back. 
It's  all  there.  Zoller  himself  admits  that." 

Yes,  Zoller  admitted  it,  but  the  repayment  did  not 
suffice.  "  It's  knowing  you  could  ever  have  done  such 
a  thing,"  said  Mame. 

If  she  had  only  wept,  he  would  have  been  able 
to  deal  with  her;  she  used  to  weep  so  easily;  but  she 
did  not  weep  now:  she  stood  there  in  a  sort  of  sad 
placidity.  He  couldn't  understand  this  sister.  He 
was  terribly  afraid  of  her.  Charley's  tears  ceased 
to  flow  for  the  sake  of  effect:  they  flowed  because 
he  was  hopeless. 

"  Come  back,  Mame,"  he  sobbed.  "  Come  back 
to  the  old  house  and  let  me  be  there  with  you. 
Don't  turn  me  out — your  own  brother!  " 

Neither  Mame's  voice  nor  her  expression 
changed.  "  Listen  here,  Charley,"  she  said.  '  You 
are  my  own  brother  and  I  hope  I'm  a  Christian 
woman He  made  a  pitifully  grateful  move 
ment  toward  her,  but  she  stopped  him  by  a  mere 
shake  of  her  head.  "  I  hope  I'm  a  Christian  woman, 
and  I'm  going  to  try  to  do  my  duty,"  she  continued, 
"  but — I'm  not  going  to  be  a  blamed  fool.  I'm  go 
ing  to  remember  poppa  and  do  what  he'd  want.  All 
my  life's  been  kind  of  arid,  and  you'd  like  it  to 
keep  on  being.  Now  it's  going  to  change.  It's  just 
been  like  the  Bible  says:  I  was  like  a  pelican  of 
the  wilderness  and  an  owl  of  the  desert;  but  here's 
where  you  get  off." 


388  JIM 

"  Get  off?  " — And  it  was  Mame  speaking!  Where 
had  she  learned  such  a  phrase?  To  be  sure,  she 
must  often  have  heard  him  use  it,  but  for  her  to 

repeat  it He  mistrusted  his  ears.  He  did  not 

know  this  woman.  For  a  moment  he  was  utterly 
dumfounded  by  her  entire  attitude.  Then: 

"  But,  Mame "  he  began. 

"Just  a  moment,  please,"  said  Mame.  She  looked 
like  a  bovine  oracle,  uttering  the  will  of  implacable 
gods.  "  Of  course  I'm  going  to  do  what's  right 
by  you,  but  you  see  I  know  you  now  better  than  even 
poppa  did,  and  so  it  wouldn't  be  right — it  wouldn't 
be  what  poppa'd  want — if  I  did  as  much  as  he  used 
to.  I  won't  do  anything  that  I  and  Mr.  Zoller  think 
poppa'd  disapprove  of  if  he  was  here  to  have  his 
say.  Now,  I'll  come  back  to  the  house,  for  that 
was  mine,  and  not  yours :  poppa  always  wanted  that 
I  should  have  it,  anyhow.  And  you  can  live  there 
with  me — by  yourself:  you  don't  seem  to  know  how 
to  manage  a  wife.  You've  shown  you're  not  fitted 
for  business,  and  you're  safer  if  you  don't  have  a 
job.  I'll  give  you  a  regular  allowance — or  Mr. 
Zoller  will.  It  won't  be  as  much  as  you  used  to 
get,  for  if  poppa  was  alive  he'd  know  that  wasn't 
good  for  you.  Still,  it'll  be  as  regular  as  it  ever 
was,  and  you  won't  be  having  any  expenses  to  speak 
of.  You  can  have  the  room  you  used  to  have  before 
you  were  married,  and  I'll  run  the  house  and  make 
everything  as  pleasant  as  possible;  but  7  will  run  it. 
And  you've  got  to  quit  drinking,  Charley.  I'll  do 
my  duty  as  a  Christian  and  as  your  sister,  but  my 
duty  don't  include  living  under  the  same  roof  with 
a  wicked  woman,  if  you  could  get  Edith  back,  and 


JIM  389 

me  being  your  sister  only  makes  it  more  important 
I  should  follow  poppa's  will;  and  now  I've  got  back 
the  money  where  I  see  he  all  along  meant  it  should 
be,  I'm  going  to  keep  it — all  of  it — in  my  own 
hands." 

He  listened  to  her,  scarcely  understanding.  He 
realized  only  that  she  was  using  compulsion  against 
him  and  that  she  could  use  it  successfully.  This  was 
the  woman  of  whom  he  had  always  thought  that  she 
"  didn't  count." 

"  Mame,"  he  sobbed,  "  is  this  sisterly  of  you?  " 
"  It's    what    poppa    would   have    wanted,"    said 
Mame.      "  Mr.   Zoller  will   attend   to   everything. 
It's  what  poppa  would  have  wanted,  and  I've  got 
to  think  of  myself  and  poppa." 


LAST  CHAPTER 

MAME  had  her  way.    She  had  her  way  com 
pletely.     For  the  first  time  in  her  life,  this 
weak  woman  found  in  her  hands  the  un 
challenged    whip    and    reins    of    power,    and    she 
employed  them  with  the  cool  determination  that  is 
to  be  found  nowhere  among  mankind  save  in  the 
weak  made  strong. 

For  a  while,  for  almost  as  much  as  a  month,  Char 
ley  tried  to  rebel  against  it,  in  secret.  The  little 
money  he  had  left  he  spent,  as  a  sort  of  protest 
against  Mame's  tyranny  and  Edith's  desertion,  on 
Claire  Girodet;  but  when  that  money  was  gone  and 
there  remained  only  Mame's  allowance,  which 
scarcely  kept  him  in  poor  tobacco  and  furtive  whisky, 
Claire  plainly  expressed  her  expected  opinion  that 
he  was  impudent  to  suppose  she  could  care  anything 
about  him  except  what  his  money  had  brought.  She 
called  him  a  fool;  she  said  he  looked  like  a  frog. 
At  the  climax  of  an  ugly  scene,  when  he  had  cringed 
while  she  scolded,  she  dismissed  him  forever,  as  a 
Bordeaux  housewife  would  dismiss  a  thieving 
concierge. 

He  thought  'about  regaining  his  independence  by 
getting  work.  Without  Mame's  knowledge — for  she 
was  resolute  in  her  belief  that  he  was  safest  unem 
ployed — he  sullenly  sought  a  position,  but  he  sought 
without  finding.  He  had  no  genuine  business  ex 
perience  and  no  clerical  education.  He  was  not  even 

390 


JIM  39i 

a  competent  manual  worker  or  handyman.  He  had 
never  been  a  practical  inventor;  he  possessed  no  skill 
with  tools :  amid  the  clutter  of  his  uninstructed  brain, 
he  had  merely  stumbled  on  the  idea  of  the  sounder 
and  exploited  it.  Lacking  training  and  recommen 
dations,  looking  twice  his  age  and  all  his  habits, 
he  was  everywhere  informed  that  he  was  too  old 
and  too  incompetent.  He  had  to  abandon  his  search 
and  remain  what  Mame  wanted  him  to  be.  As  time 
passed,  he  succumbed  to  her  firmer  will;  he  settled 
down  to  the  part  of  a  barely-tolerated  family 
skeleton  rigorously  confined  to  a  cupboard  to  which 
only  his  sister  and  Zoller  possessed  the  keys. 

From  the  first,  the  attorney,  who  exercised  so 
subtle  an  influence  over  Mame,  reduced  Charley  to 
abject  terror.  Lawyer  and  client  made  certain  of 
the  brother's  peculations,  and  his  sin,  like  the  Psalm 
ist's,  was  ever  before  him.  He  was  frightened  into 
his  first  submission,  and,  once  having  submitted,  he 
lost  all  chance  of  future  liberty. 

Long  ago  he  had  been  told  he  must  do  nothing 
so  sentimental  and  so  compromising  as  to  permit 
Edith  to  divorce  him:  he  was  to  divorce  her.  He 
would  leave  everything  to  Zoller.  He  was  not  to 
bother  over  the  thought  of  Edith's  contesting  the 
suit;  Zoller,  with  the  evidence  that  was  in  his  ca 
pable  hands,  would  see  she  did  nothing  of  the  sort, 
and  would  see  there  was  no  publicity.  So  Charley 
appeared  before  a  referee;  he  answered,  in  words 
previously  supplied  him,  questions  he  had  been 
warned  would  be  asked;  and  one  evening  Mame 
quite  casually  let  fall  the  news  that  the  decree  of 
divorce  had  been  made  final  a  week  before. 


392  JIM 

That  news  was  a  fair  example  of  his  entire  situa 
tion  in  his  father's  house.  The  even  course  of  the 
Vanaman  establishment,  its  traditional  respectability 
and  quiet,  were  thus  preserved.  Late  Summer  gave 
place  to  Autumn  and  Autumn  to  Winter,  and  Edith 
was  apparently  forgotten,  and  Mame  reigned  in  her 
stead. 

Charley's  descent  became  rapid,  and  led  to  a  posi 
tion  wholly  servile.  His  sister  treated  him  as  if 
he  were  a  child,  a  child  in  disgrace;  an  idiot  aunt 
bequeathed  to  Mame's  care  by  the  preceding  gen 
eration;  a  piece  of  furniture  too  decrepit  for  use 
and  too  unfashionable  for  exhibition,  but,  because 
a  deceased  and  respected  parent  had  sometimes  used 
it,  now  tolerated  in  the  limbo  of  "  upstairs."  He 
was  given  all  the  odd  jobs  about  the  house  to  do, 
and  Mame  found  many.  Zoller,  the  stony-hearted, 
directed  and  shared  Mame's  power,  called  often  to 
consult  with  his  client,  and  regularly,  on  the  fifteenth 
day  of  every  month,  summoned  Charley  into  the 
gloomy  parlor  and  handed  over  the  meager  allow 
ance,  for  which  he  exacted  a  punctilious  receipt. 
Out  of  these  sums  the  pensioner  purchased  the  bad 
tobacco  and  contraband  whisky,  and  soon  ceased 
much  to  care. 

He  scuttled  about  the  back  ways  and  corners  of 
the  house,  unshaven  and  collarless.  He  clung  to 
a  waistcoat,  but  was  more  comfortable  without  a 
coat.  He  had  visibly  shrunken;  his  clothes  hung 
more  loosely  than  ever,  and  his  eyes,  above  the  hol 
lows  in  his  cheeks,  were  more  prominent.  He  walked 
with  a  shuffle  in  a  pair  of  his  dead  father's  carpet- 
slippers  that  were  too  big  for  him.  When  he  was 


JIM  393 

allowed  to  talk  at  all,  he  never  mentioned  his  Chinese 
adventures.  Occasionally  he  felt  the  stirrings  of 
ideas  for  money-making,  reflex  movements,  mere 
brain-throbs  to  the  tune  of  former  habit;  but  he 
had  neither  the  means  nor  the  energy  to  encourage 
them,  and  they  gradually  became  less  and  less  fre 
quent.  His  greatest  solace  was  to  lock  himself  in 
his  narrow  room  at  night  and  drink  himself  to  sleep. 
Sometimes  he  wondered  why  he  had  been  such  a 
fool  as  to  marry  Edith,  marriage  being  unneces 
sary,  and  reflected  again  on  the  male  commonplace 
that  a  woman  untrue  to  one  man  will  be  untrue  to 
another.  He  read  the  newspapers,  when  his  sister 
was  through  with  them,  and  in  one  of  these  he  once 
read  some  mention  of  Tyrrell  as  being  in  the  Orient, 
which  led  him  to  suppose  Edith  adrift.  From  words 
that  he  overheard  pass  between  Zoller  and  his  sis 
ter — he  eavesdropped  on  them  continually  and  found 
a  sort  of  adventurous  pleasure  in  it — he  caught  a 
report  that  his  wife  had  been  living  with  George 
Mertcheson,  and  that  Mertcheson  was  dead.  Most 
of  the  pensioner's  passions  degenerated  into  inclina 
tions;  only  one  retained  its  former  force,  grew  in 
deed  with  the  decline  of  its  fellows:  his  hatred  of 
the  man  from  his  conspiracy  against  whom  all  his 
disasters  derived.  He  hated  Jim. 

§  2.  When  Edith  had  left  the  Vanaman  house, 
she  went  direct  to  Tyrrell's  club.  She  would  have 
telephoned  ahead,  but  the  telephone  had  once  be 
fore  betrayed  her,  and  when  she  reached  the  street 
she  did  not  want  to  lose  time.  At  the  corner  she 
looked  for  an  unengaged  taxi:  all  that  flew  by  her 


394  JIM 

had  their  tin  flags  lowered,  bearing  happy  freight 
home  from  the  theaters  or  away  to  tango-suppers. 
Then  she  remembered  what  Tyrrell  had  said:  u  Any 
sort  of  passion  can  ride  in  a  taxi;  but  in  a  hansom 
only  Love  can  ride."  An  empty  hansom  was  stand 
ing  beside  the  curb ;  slow  as  such  a  conveyance  must 
be,  she  decided  to  take  it. 

Tyrrell  was  not  at  his  club:  the  cabman  returned 
with  the  hall-porter,  who  told  her  so.  Mr.  Tyrrell 
had  come  in  a  short  time  before,  but  had  gone  out 
again,  the  porter  had  not  the  least  idea  where. 

"Where  to  now?"  asked  the  driver. 

Back?  Should  she  say  "Back"?  Edith  would 
never  say  that.  She  said  the  first  name  that  entered 
her  head: 

"  Bustanoby's." 

She  wondered  if  Tyrrell  could  be  at  any  such 
place.  She  had  not  thought  of  him  as  frequenting 
restaurants  and  public  dances  without  her;  it  was 
certainly  unlikely  that  he  would  seek  one  after  what 
had  passed  between  them;  yet  she  did  not  know 
where  else  to  look  for  him.  She  must  hunt  until 
she  found. 

At  Bustanoby's,  where  Tyrrell  was  known,  she 
was  told  that  he  had  left  a  few  minutes  since,  say 
ing  something  about  running  up  to  the  Beaux-Arts. 
It  was  good,  in  the  quiet  of  West  Fortieth  Street,  to 
see  him,  in  response  to  her  message,  strolling, 
leisurely  and  hatless,  from  the  cafe  to  her  cab. 

"You?"  He  was  unmistakably  startled.  "I 
hadn't  any  idea " 

"  No;  I  didn't  send  in  my  name." 

He  leaned  over  the  flap  of  the  cab:  "  Of  course 


JIM  395 

I'm  no  end  glad  to  see  you.    But  what  is  it?    What's 
wrong?    I  thought- 
Edith  put  her  face  close  to  his :  "  Everything.    He 
beat  me— with  his  fist.    So  I  left  him.    I  walked  right 
out." 

She  saw  Tyrrell's  lips  tighten.  In  their  move 
ment,  she  welcomed  her  champion. 

"  I  sha'n't  be  two  minutes,"  he  said. 

He  was  better  than  his  word.  He  came  back  with 
his  hat  and  stick  and  leaped  into  the  hansom. 

"  Anywhere  you  like,"  he  answered  the  driver's 
question.  "  I  knew  I  couldn't  sleep  if  I  went  to  bed, 
dear,"  he  explained  to  Edith,  "  and  so  I've  been 
knocking  about  here,  looking  on.  I  hope  you  hadn't 
to  trail  me  far?  " 

She  shook  her  head.  He  had  taken  her  hand;  his 
voice  was  tender  and  considerate;  but  she  wished 
that  he  would  kiss  her — wished  that  she  could  see 
his  face. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  "  tell  me  all  about  it." 

She  gave  him  the  broad  outlines.  Jim  she  did  not 
mention,  for  she  had  never  mentioned  Jim  to  Tyr 
rell;  but  the  quarrel  with  Charley  needed  no  further 
explanation  than  that  she  gave: 

"  So  he  beat  me  because  he's  jealous  of  you,  and 
now  I'm  going  to  divorce  him." 

"You're  going  to  sue?"  Tyrrell's  voice  was 
sharp.  He  called  to  the  cabby  to  take  them  to  the 
Waldorf.  "  We'll  go  up  to  the  roof,"  he  said  to 
Edith,  "  and  talk  this  thing  over  quietly." 

Up  there  she  saw  his  face,  and  it  frightened  her. 
It  frightened  her  because  it  showed  that  she  had 
frightened  him.  There  was  music;  people  were 


396  JIM 

dancing;  but  Tyrrell  did  not  ask  her  to  dance.  He 
sat  opposite  her,  over  a  bottle  of  champagne,  and 
made  her  tell  him  the  story  a  second  time.  He 
seemed  loath  to  comment  on  it,  but  at  last  he  said: 

"  Of  course  you  can't  be  beaten  by  this  brute. 
That's  got  to  be  stopped.  I  daresay  it  wouldn't 
become  chronic,  but  your  husband  had  better  be 
brought  to  reason  right  away." 

She  did  not  like  his  tone.  She  did  not  like  his 
reference  to  Charley  as  her  husband. 

"  My  lawyer'll  bring  him  to  reason,"  she  said. 
She  felt  her  lips  twitching. 

'  Yes,  that's  an  excellent  idea.  I  tell  you  what 
we'll  do  "  —his  face  brightened :  "  you'll  put  up  at 
the  Astor  for  a  few  days  at  my  expense,  if  you  don't 
mind  accepting  a  l>it  of  money — we  can  make  it  a 
loan  if  you  insist — till  your  lawyer  has  given  your 
husband  a  good  talking-to." 

"  But,"  said  Edith—"  but- 

"  But  of  course,"  Tyrrell  pursued,  "  there  mustn't 
be  any  divorce,  or  anything  of  that  sort."  He  looked 
at  her  evenly.  "  You  see  that  now  as  well  as  I  do, 
don't  you?  People  of  the  sort  you  and  I  are  don't 
go  in  for  that  kind  of  mud,  do  they?  Why  " —he 
smiled  at  her — "  when  I  think  of  my  mother,  or 
of  all  my  s*todgy  old  dead  and  gone  Massachusetts 
ancestors,  when  you  think  of  your  quiet  family  in 
Ayton After  all,  you  and  I  have  escaped  be 
ing  Manhattanites,  haven't  we?" 

She  saw  it  all  now.  He  would  not  have  a  scandal ; 
he  had  never  meant  anything  but  a  clandestine  love- 
affair,  and  he  did  not  care  enough  about  that  to  run 
any  great  risk.  It  was  to  be  something  little  and 


JIM  397 

low,  like  Charley's  assignations  with  a  stenographer. 

She  scarcely  knew  what  she  was  desperately  saying: 

"  But  there   needn't  be   any  publicity.     I   got  a 

divorce  from  Jim,  and  almost  nobody " 

"Jim?     From  Jim?     Then  you've " 

'  Yes,  from  Jim  Trent.     He's  an  artist." 
Tyrrell  beckoned  to  the  waiter.     While  the  bill 
was  being  fetched,  her  host  said: 

"  I  know  Mr.  Trent's  work.  I  know  a  little  about 
him;  but  I  didn't  know  you  did."  He  looked  at 
her  and  smiled  again — a  smile  that  now  made  Edith 
shiver.  ''  Well,  well,"  he  said,  "  you  put  up  at  the 
Astor,  and  we'll  think  it  over.  I'll  come  around 
to-morrow  afternoon  at  four." 

§  3.  She  had  no  choice;  she  had  to  obey  him;  but 
he  did  not  call  on  her  at  four  o'clock  the  next  after 
noon:  he  never  called  on  her  again.  Instead,  he 
sent  her  a  note  that  was  tender  and  affectionate  in 
its  wording,  and  in  its  tone  a  sheer  surrender  of 
every  desire  for  her,  a  panic  flight  before  the  guns 
of  scandal.  He  had  been  called  to  Boston  by  his 
mother's  illness;  he  did  not  know  when  he  could  re 
turn.  The  possibility  of  further  physical  violence 
must,  of  course,  be  ended,  but  his  advice  was  fervent 
for  a  reconciliation  between  wife  and  husband. 

"  What,"  he  wrote,  "  was  innocent  in  our  minds  " 
— he  could  call  it  that,  this  now  cautious  man,  who 
would  not  commit  himself  in  writing!—  "  your  hus 
band  has  evidently  misconstrued,  and  although  I 
shall  always  stand  ready  to  do  anything  I  can  to  help 
the  finest  woman  I  ever  knew,  it  is  better,  for  the 
sake  of  everybody  concerned,  that  I  efface  myself, 


398  JIM 

even  beyond  the  point  of  receiving  a  reply  to  this 
note,  from  a  situation  which  it  was  never  our  in 
tention  should  wound  anyone."  He  inclosed,  with 
out  comment,  five  one-hundred-dollar  bills. 

That  was  the  fall  of  the  structure  she  had  founded 
on  Tyrrell's  affections.  She  had,  she  saw,  torn  it 
down  by  her  proposal  of  a  divorce  and  the  mention 
of  her  divorce  from  Jim.  She  saw  Tyrrell  genu 
flecting  before  a  New  England  family  that  had  never 
known  a  divorce,  a  Boston  set  in  which  the  inde 
cencies  held  fast  to  the  mask  of  respectability.  She 
realized  that  this  was  the  end.  She  hated  him  for 
having  rejected  her,  hated  him  for  the  very  quali 
ties  that  had  attracted  her  to  him:  for  his  polite 
ness  and  thin  polish,  and  for  the  sort  of  people  from 
whom  he  originated.  She  hated  him  almost  as  much 
as  she  hated  Jim,  whose  relation  to  her  she  held 
responsible  for  this  catastrophe.  She  wrote  to  Tyr 
rell,  but  he  did  not  reply. 

Through  a  sleepless  night,  she  came  to  her  deci 
sion.  She  would  not  return  to  Charley.  The  money 
she  kept  without  question.  Against  the  background 
of  her  long  poverty,  five  hundred  dollars  bulked  like 
wealth.  Besides,  for  a  time,  she  hoped,  against  con 
viction,  that  Tyrrell  would  write  again. 

She  went  to  Schultz  and  asked  him  to  get  her  a 
divorce  from  Charley,  but  Schultz,  remembering  her 
conduct  in  the  former  case,  refused  her;  he  might 
almost  be  said  to  have  turned  her  out  of  his  office. 
Leishman  listened,  but,  after  he  had  heard  from 
Zoller,  demonstrated  to  her  amazed  indignation 
that,  if  she  did  not  want  to  be  exhibited  to  the  pub 
lic  in  the  worst  of  light,  she  must  submit  to  appear- 


JIM  399 

ing  as  a  respondent.  Her  case,  though  for  other 
reasons,  was  what  Jim's  had  been:  guiltless,  she  must 
submit  to  appearing  guilty. 

Among  her  shattered  hopes,  she  passed  some  ter 
rible  days.  She  came  from  them  into  a  period  of 
extravagance,  in  which  she  spent  the  better  part 
of  the  money  Tyrrell  had  left  her.  She  bought  a 
few  of  the  clothes  that  she  had  long  wanted.  Reck 
lessly,  she  returned  alone  to  the  restaurants,  the 
cabarets,  the  tango-teas.  She  renewed,  but  failed  to 
keep  up,  her  acquaintance  with  the  stray  women  she 
had  met  there;  with  whatever  man  asked  her  to 
dance,  she  danced.  She  left  the  Astor,  and  when 
her  money  was  gone,  she  tried  to  get  a  place  as  a 
professional  dancer. 

'  You've  no  chance,"  the  cafe-proprietors  told 
her.  "  A  few  months  ago,  you  might  have  got  on, 
but  we're  filled  up  with  real  vaudeville  stars  nowa 
days." 

The  frail-limbed  master  that  had  taught  her  the 
new  dances  would  not  give  her  lessons  to  fit  her  for 
professional  dancing  except  at  prices  beyond  the 
reach  of  her  dwindling  capital.  "  I  told  you,  any 
how,"  he  said,  "  you  wouldn't  do  for  the  cabarets." 
She  could  nowhere  find  a  partner  that  could  make 
her  dance  as  Tyrrell  had  made  her. 

Once  she  thought  of  appealing  to  Jim,  but  she 
was  too  bitter  and  too  proud  for  that.  Tyrrell  was 
now  out  of  reach;  he  was  traveling  in  the  Orient,  she 
was  told,  and  had  left  no  address  behind.  She  did 
write  to  her  relatives.  Uncle  Gregory  sent  her  a 
check  for  fifty  dollars  and  another  letter  that  was  a 
sermon  against  divorce;  the  Reverend  Stephen  sent 


400  JIM 

her  a  ten-dollar  bill  and  asked  her  not  to  ac 
knowledge  its  receipt:  letters  from  her  upset  his 
wife. 

After  a  sharp  illness,  she  returned  to  Ayton, 
where  Aunt  Caroline  sat  in  the  parlor  with  folded 
hands  and  pursed  lips  and  said  nothing,  while  Aunt 
Polly  chewed  gum  and  asked  her  why  she  had  been 
such  a  fool  as  to  lose  Jim,  and  Aunt  Hattie  blinked 
and  grinned  and  giggled  her  religion.  Pug-nosed 
Uncle  Morty  complained  to  these  aunts  of  the  addi 
tional  expense,  in  tones  intended  to  reach  Edith's 
ears,  and  she  went  back  to  New  York  as  soon  as 
she  could  borrow,  from  Aunt  Hattie's  music-lesson 
fund,  the  money  to  get  there.  For  a  time,  after  that, 
she  took  up  with  Effie  Mitchell,  but  they  quarreled. 
All  of  her  other  old  acquaintances,  and  especially 
Diana,  she  avoided. 

She  had  been  collecting  misfortunes  as  some  peo 
ple  collect  money.  There  comes  the  point  when 
money  continues  to  grow  without  effort  by  the  pos 
sessor  :  Edith's  mishaps  grew  by  interest,  simple  and 
compound.  She  met  Mertcheson,  and  he  offered  to 
befriend  her.  On  the  night  of  their  meeting,  they 
danced  hard  together  and  rode  to  his  rooms  in  an 
open  taxi-cab.  Five  minutes  after  the  ride  was  over, 
Mertcheson  had  a  chill;  he  was  desperately  ill  all 
night,  and  she  dared  not  leave  him.  The  next  day 
the  doctor  that  she  called  in  diagnosed  his  patient's 
case  as  one  of  pneumonia  and,  although  Edith,  in  her 
old  fear  of  death,  nursed  him  with  a  desperate  ten 
derness,  Mertcheson  died.  It  was  only  then  that 
Edith  thought  of  sending  for  his  relatives  and 
brought  his  mother,  a  quiet,  sad-eyed  woman  in 


JIM  401 

black,  to  the  bed  on  which  the  body  of  the  man 
with  the  unfinished  ears  and  trivial  chin  lay  dead. 
Are  you  the  nurse?  "  asked  Mrs.  Mertcheson. 

"  No,"  said  Edith.  Her  discretion  had  fled  the 
presence  of  mortality.  "  I'm  just  a  friend." 

The  mother  took  her  son's  body  away,  and  some 
how  the  thing,  escaping  the  papers,  was  whispered 
in  the  clubs.  The  fact  that  its  real  victim  had  once 
been  James  Trent's  wife  made  it  worth  whispering. 

She  had  the  full  name  without  the  real  game.  She 
took  an  ugly  room  in  Sixteenth  Street,  west  of  Sixth 
Avenue.  She  had  twenty  dollars  that  she  had  found 
in  Mertcheson's  pockets,  and,  in  early  May,  she 
faced  a  speedy  choice  between  playing  the  real  game 
or  death.  She  passed  three  days  deciding. 

When  she  thought  of  Charley,  it  was  first  with 
scorn  and  later  with  a  certain  tolerance.  The  worst 
thing  about  the  failure  of  their  life  together  had 
been  its  monotony:  even  their  quarrels  had  been  of 
one  monotonous  piece;  they  had  said  the  same 
phrases  over  and  over,  made  the  same  accusations 
.  week  by  week.  It  all  went  back  to  Jim,  who  had 
calculatingly  let  her  divorce  him,  whom  even  Schultz 
perversely  thought  she  had  wronged:  the  poverty, 
the  lies,  the  drunkenness,  even  the  disloyalty  to  Char 
ley,  the  wreck  of  that  very  disloyalty,  all  went  back 
to  Jim.  She  saw  that,  had  Charley  prospered,  or 
old  Vanaman  been  kind,  her  union  would  still  have 
been  much  what  it  was— because  of  Jim.  The  breath 
of  its  original  deceit  had  become  an  entire  atmos 
phere  of  deception  surcharged  with  the  lightnings 
of  suspicion — because  of  Jim.  Even  now,  Jim,  who 
had  brought  them  togeth--  and  made  them  repel  each 


402  JIM 

other,  somehow,  across  the  city,  united  them — Jim, 
who,  she  finally  thought,  had  probably  allowed  her 
to  divorce  him  because  he  wanted  to  get  rid  of  her. 

She  had  become  careless  in  her  habits  and  in  her 
dress.  Her  face  had  hardened,  her  voice  was 
harsher,  her  brown  eyes  dull.  She  had  abandoned 
her  last  thought  of  success;  her  highest  ambition  was 
for  some  endurable  compromise.  She  was  always 
lonely,  so  lonely  that,  from  sheer  habit,  she  would 
sometimes  wish  Charley  were  with  her,  if  only  to 
have  him  to  quarrel  with  and  to  talk  to  about  the 
wrong  that  Jim  had  done  them.  But  on  this  May 
evening  she  must  think  about  the  ways  of  escaping 
from  life :  she  was  thinking  about  death  when  some 
body  knocked  at  her  door. 

§  4.    At   first   she   did   not   know   who    he   was. 

He  was  a  tall  man,  clean-shaven,  silver-haired. 
His  eyes  were  sharp  but  pleasant;  his  man 
ner  easy,  but  out  of  place  in  Sixteenth  Street. 

Edith  jumped  to  her  feet.  Instinctively,  her  nerv 
ous  hands  darted  upward  to  arrange  her  hair. 

"  Please  don't  disturb  yourself,"  said  her  caller. 
"  I  sha'n't  keep  you  ten  minutes."  He  gave  her  his 
card. 

Edith  read  that  he  was  Mr.  Douglas  Aspinall,  of 
Lord's  Court  Building,  27  William  Street.  In  the 
lower  left-hand  corner  of  the  card  were  the  words: 
"  Aspinall  &  Derry,  Counselors-at-Law."  She 
looked  up : 

"  I  don't  understand " 

It  was  quite  simple,  he  assured  her.  He  came  in 
person  because  he  had  experienced  some  trouble  in 


JIM  403 

finding  her  address  and  establishing  her  identity, 
but  that  was  the  only  intricate  portion  of  his  task, 
and  it  was  over.  He  came  to  tell  her  that  an 
annuity — small,  but  absolutely  unconditioned  and  the 
best  his  client  could  afford — had  been  settled  upon 
her:  "To  be  paid  quarterly  in  sums  aggregating 
three  hundred  and  sixty-four  dollars  a  year."  He 
was  not  to  tell  her  the  name  of  her  benefactor  un 
less  she  insisted,  but  since  she  did  insist,  he  was  at 
liberty  to  say  that  it  was  James  Trent. 

For  a  full  minute  Edith  said  nothing.  When  she 
did  speak,  her  face  was  averted. 

"  So  it's  Jim,"  she  said. 

Yes,  it  was  Jim.  Though  he  had  married  a  rich 
wife,  he  earned,  it  appeared,  a  comfortable  com 
petence  from  his  art  and  he  had  just  sold  three  pic 
tures  for  the  sum  with  which  he  invested  in  this 
annuity.  What  pictures?  Mr.  Aspinall  did  not  see 
why  she  should  care,  but  there  was  no  secret  about 
it;  it  would  doubtless  soon  be  published:  they  were 
a  portrait  of  Bishop  Peel,  a  picture  of  some  tango- 
dancers  that  was  popular  about  a  year  ago — prob 
ably  she  remembered  the  reproductions,  which  were 
everywhere — and  a  still  earlier  painting,  the  picture 
of  a  woman  in  a  dressing-gown,  called,  the  lawyer 
believed 

"I  know  it,"  said  Edith,  shortly;  it  was  that 
portrait  of  her,  the  portrait  about  which  she  had 
been  so  angry  with  Jim.  Well,  she  was  angry  now, 
but  she  was  glad  to  have  the  money — that  was  sal 
vation — from  whatever  source — and  her  only  curi 
osity  was  as  to  the  price  paid  for  that  picture: 
"What  did  he  get  for  it?" 


404  JIM 

Aspinall  shook  his  head  at  her: 

"  Don't  you  think  I've  already  told  you  more  than 
I  ought  to?  " 

She  couldn't  move  him — and,  after  all,  what  did 
she  care?  "  He's  still — he's  still  married?  There's 
no  harm  in  asking  that,  I  guess." 

"None  whatever.  Oh,  yes,  he's  still  married! 
Very  happily,  I  believe.  And  he  has  a  little  son." 

She  got  up  and  walked  across  the  room,  her  back 
toward  the  lawyer.  She  stood  thus  until  he  was 
through  stating  the  arrangements  for  payment  and 
its  methods.  Then  she  turned. 

"  How  did  you  know  I  was  living  here?  How 
did  he  know  I  needed — needed  it?" 

But  she  guessed  the  reply:  there  had  been  that 
gossip  about  Mertcheson's  death,  of  course;  Jim 
could  not  help  hearing  it;  she  herself  had  heard  its 
echoes.  And  that  picture  was  helping  to  pay- 
She  broke  out  in  angry  denunciations  of  Jim.  If 
Aspinall  only  knew  what  she  knew;  if  he  guessed 
what  sort  of  man  his  client  was!  This  Trent  had 
wrecked  her  life;  he  had  ruined  her;  he  followed 
a  secret  career  of  debauchery.  She  spread  her  old 
accusations  before  her  visitor  before  he  could  raise 
his  voice  in  protest.  She  was  so  skillful  in  her  at 
tack  that  she  even  woke  temper  in  the  legal  mind. 

"  And  he  sends  you  to  me  now  as  if  I  was  a  beg 
gar!  "  she  ended.  "  Oh,  I'll  take  your  money:  you 
bet  I'll  take  the  money.  I've  earned  it.  But  don't 
say  he  sent  you  because  he  thought  it'd  be  '  painful ' 
for  me  to  see  him.  Of  course  he  did  say  that:  it's 
so  like  him.  But  I  know  he  did  it  because  he  wanted 
to  be  high-and-mighty.  If  he  didn't  want  to  be 


JIM  405 

high-and  mighty,  he  wouldn't  have  missed  the  pleas 
ure  of  seeing  for  himself  how  hard  up  I  am." 

Aspinall's  eyes  were  less  pleasant  now. 

"  If  you  want  to  know  what  Mr.  Trent  felt,"  he 
replied,  "  I'll  tell  you.  Although  I  pointed  out  to 
him  that  you  have  no  claim,  either  legal  or  moral, 
upon  him,  he  said:  'I  only  wish  I  could  do  more 
for  her;  I  can't  bear  to  think  the  poor  thing  might 
starve.'  " 

It  was  wanton  repetition  of  a  phrase  uttered  in 
confidence;  but  Aspinall  had  been  too  severely  tried. 
Edith  recoiled  from  it.  She  seemed  to  see  Jim's 
face  again,  alight  now  with  a  large  and  patient  pity. 
"  I  can't  bear  to  think  the  poor  thing  might 
starve!  " 

He  had  never  meant  her  to  hear  that;  but  he  had 
said  it,  and  she  hated  him  for  his  compassion.  Still, 
money  was  money,  however  little  and  however  de 
rived;  once  this  money  was  hers,  it  was  nobody's 
else.  .  .  . 

When  the  lawyer  left  her,  she  shook  hands  with 
him,  for  she  was  grateful  for  the  money.  But  she 
hated  Jim  for  this  humiliation — how  she  hated  Jim! 

§  5.  So,  once  again,  the  gypsy  lad,  Spring,  had 
come  running  up  the  streets  of  New  York,  behind 
his  harbinger,  the  hurdy-gurdy,  and  singing  as  he 
ran.  The  children  heard  him  first  and  laughed  at 
their  play  under  the  budding  trees  in  the  public 
squares.  Then  even  the  older  people  began  to  give 
ear  to  his  bragging  lies  and  pay  heed  to  his  swag 
gering  promises:  often  ere  now  he  had  tricked  them, 
but  they  forgot,  as  he  so  loftily  forgot,  how  sadly 


4o6  JIM 

he  had  deceived  the  world  a  year  ago,  and  every 
year  before.  Even  Mame,  to  all  physical  appear 
ance  unchanged,  marvelously  heard  him  and 
believed. 

"  Charley,"  she  said  one  evening  as  she  casually 
paused  in  the  hall  before  starting  for  her  missionary- 
meeting,  "  it  won't  make  any  difference  to  your  life 
here,  and  everything'll  be  as  pleasant  as  it's  always 
been,  for  we'll  all  keep  right  on;  but  next  week  I'm 
going  to  marry  Mr.  Zoller.  Now,  be  sure  you  have 
the  shutters  shut  by  ten  o'clock,  and  don't  forget  the 
back  door:  the  lock's  out  of  order;  use  the  bolt." 

Charley  was  capable  only  of  a  schoolboy  wrig 
gling  of  his  shoulders.  He  had  been  expecting  this. 
He  did  not  raise  his  voice  to  protest — that  voice 
trembling  and  uncertain  now :  he  merely  waited  until 
she  went  out  and  then,  coatless,  collarless,  and  un 
shaven,  shuffled  away  upstairs  in  his  father's  carpet- 
slippers  that  were  too  large  for  him. 

Only  very  deep  in  his  heart  did  he  hear  the  call 
of  Spring  or  reckon  with  the  announcement  of  his 
sister's  approaching  wedding.  With  Zoller  perma 
nently  quartered  in  the  house,  he  would  be  a  bit  more 
uncomfortable  than  he  was  now,  but  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  Zoller,  or  at  any  rate  Zoller's  orders,  had 
for  so  long  shared  the  rule  there  that  this  new  change 
could  hardly  count.  Charley  had  been  informed 
that  he  was  to  "  go  along "  just  as  he  had  been 
going,  and  he  knew  that  nothing  could  set  him  free. 
So,  when  he  reached  his  room,  he  kicked  off  his  slip 
pers  and  sat  in  his  stocking  feet  under  the  gas-jet, 
his  hair  a  little  thinner,  his  face  a  little  looser  and 
more  bloated,  and  his  eyes  a  little  more  like  a  bull- 


JIM  407 

frog's  than  they  used  to  be.  With  a  scanty  half  pint 
of  whisky  beside  him,  some  cheap  tobacco  in  a  cheap 
pipe — he  could  no  longer  afford  even  the  cheapest 
cigars — he  read  the  evening  newspaper  line  by  line 
and  felt  but  vaguely  the  summons  of  the  season. 

Then,  oddly  side  by  side  in  the  paper,  where  Fate 
loves  to  play  in  strange  juxtapositions  and  odd  con 
trasts,  his  glance  came  upon  two  brief  items  of  news. 
One  was  an  account  of  the  work  of  James  Trent;  it 
told  how  the  French  Government  had  bought,  for 
the  Luxembourg  collection,  the  portrait  of  the  paint 
er's  wife  and  son;  how  a  church-society  had  pur 
chased  his  portrait  of  Bishop  Peel,  and  presented 
it  to  the  bishop's  wife,  and  how  a  millionaire,  famous 
for  buying  whatever  he  was  told  was  good,  had  now 
paid  a  large  price  for  the  same  artist's  tango-dancers 
and  that  other  portrait  named  simply  "  A  Woman." 
The  second  paragraph  announced  what  it  called  a 
"  Society  Engagement "  between  the  daughter  of  one 
of  the  richest  men  in  New  York  and  Robert  Tyr 
rell,  of  Boston. 

For  a  half  hour  the  lonely  Charley  sat  with  those 
items  before  his  eyes,  drinking  his  bad  whisky  and 
smoking  his  bad  tobacco.  He  was  long  past  swear 
ing  at  the  power  which  shapes  the  destinies  of  men; 
he  was  past  anything  save  a  mild  regret  and  a  sneak 
ing  longing  and  a  futile  hatred  that  he  knew  to  be 
futile.  But,  fretful  and  weak  as  he  was,  his  very 
hatred  of  Jim  made  him  now,  realizing  the  utter 
hopelessness  of  his  own  wreck,  see  one  thing  clearly: 
he  saw  clearly  that  what  had  happened  to  him  had 
happened  not  because  he  married  a  divorced  woman; 
what  had  happened  had  happened  because  he  and 


408  JIM 

Edith  had  cheated  at  the  game  and  had  so  made  their 
strongest  bond  the  mutual  knowledge  of  a  mutual 
unworthiness  and  distrust. 

Charley  rather  thought  he  would  like  to  tell  her 
of  the  evening's  news.  He  could  hear  her  saying: 
"The  idea!  He  sold  that  old  thing!  I  wonder 
how  he  could  swindle  anybody  into  buying  that." 
It  would  be  a  relief  to  join  with  her  in  condemning 
Jim,  even  in  quarreling  with  her  again.  Besides,  he 
would  vaguely  like  her  to  know  that  he  felt  her  no 
more  to  blame  than  he  had  been.  A  trifle  befud 
dled  by  the  liquor,  for  he  was  now  as  easily  affected 
by  it  as  in  the  days  when  he  took  his  first  drink 
with  Jim — the  days  before  the  days  when  he  could 
take  so  much  and  show  so  little — he  tiptoed  down 
stairs  to  the  telephone,  wondering  whether,  by  search 
ing  the  directory,  he  could  find  the  name  of  any  old 
acquaintance  that  might  know  her  present  address. 
And,  as  he  reached  the  hall,  the  'phone-bell  rang. 

He  took  up  the  receiver  through  which  Edith  had 
listened  to  Tyrrell  on  the  morning  that  Mame  came 
in  and  caught  her.  It  was  as  he  had  almost,  for  no 
discernible  reason,  expected:  somewhere,  out  in  the 
softness  of  that  night  in  lying  Spring,  Edith  had 
also  seen  those  two  pieces  of  news  in  the  evening 
paper  and  was  telephoning  him. 

"  Hello !  "  she  said,  and  he  knew  her  voice. 

His  heart  beat  swiftly,  but  it  could  never  again 
beat  so  swiftly  as  it  used  to  beat. 

"  Hello!  "  he  whispered,  afraid  to  raise  his  voice 
in  the  house  that  was  Mame's,  even  when  Mame  was 
out  of  it.  "  This  is  Charley." 

"This  is— this  is  Edith." 


JIM  409 

11  Yes,  I  know." 

"Are  you  alone,  Charley?" 

4  Yes,  but — but  not  for  long.     Mame's  at  a  mis 
sionary-meeting.    She'll  be  back  any  minute  now." 

There  was  a  momentary  pause.  Then  Edith's 
voice  resumed: 

"  I  was  just  wondering  how  you  were." 

"  Oh,  I'm  all  right.    How  about  you?  " 

"  No  worse  off  than  I'll  ever  be,  I  guess."  She 
gave  him  the  address  of  her  lodging-house.  "  I've 
been  hard  up,"  she  said. 

"  So  have  I,"  said  Charley.  "  What  have  you 
been  doing?  " 

"  Almost  nothing.  I  did  try  to  get  a  job  tangoing 
in  a  cabaret,  but  I  wasn't  good  enough." 

"  Tangoing?  "  He  had  no  hatred  of  it  now;  he 
had  no  hatred  of  the  other  things  he  had  heard 
of  her.  "  I  didn't  know  you  could  do  it." 

"  It  seems  I  can't." 

"When  did  you  learn?" 

"  After  I  left  you.  How's  the  invention, 
Charley?" 

He  told  her  of  its  collapse.  "  So  I'm  living  on 
a  few  dollars  a  week  from  Mame,"  he  said. 

He  heard  her  gasp: 

"  So  you're  on  her  list?  I  found  out  to-day  that 
I  was,  too.  She's  hunted  me  up:  Zoller  says  she 
considers  it  her  Christian  duty  not  to  let  me  starve." 
Edith's  voice  was  acrid.  "  A  lot  of  people  seem 
more  afraid  of  me  dead  than  alive.  Another  one 
turned  up  a  while  ago.  Mame's  three  dollars  a 
week  had  conditions:  I  wasn't  to  see  you;  the  first 
one  hadn't  any." 


410  JIM 

Nowadays  Mame  led  his  thoughts: 

"  Well,  /  can't  move  hand  or  foot  without  Mame's 
say-so."  There  were  tears  of  self-pity  in  his  eyes, 
not  so  much  at  the  fact  as  at  the  telling  of  it.  "  And 
I'm  too  busted-up  and  too  middle-aged  ever  to  get 
a  job  again.  Edith  " — his  voice  became  insinuating 
— "  do  you  think  you  could  lend  me  enough  to  give 
me  a  start  in  business?  A  month  or  so  ago  I  got 
a  great  idea,  and  if  I  could  only  get  a  little  capital 

together It'd  pay  you  five  per  cent,  on  your 

investment  from  the  jump." 

"Lend  you  money?  I  know  you  too  well  for 
that,  Charley — and  my  whole  income's  ten  a  week. 
Seven  of  it  comes  from  Jim." 

"Jim?"  he  repeated.  The  receiver  shook  in  his 
hands.  "  And  he's  only  giving  you " 

"  Seven  per.  Of  course  he's  pretending  it's  the 
best  he  can  do.  Isn't  that  like  him?" 

There  was  silence. 

"  I'm  sorry  for  you,"  Charley  said  at  last. 

"  And  I'm  sorry  for  you,"  she  returned. 

"  Did  you — did  you  see  to-night's  paper,  Edith?  " 

"About  Jim?" 

"  Yes,  and  about " 

"  Oh,  I  knew  about  that  a  week  ago.  You  needn't 
worry;  I'll  never  see  him  again." 

"  I  wasn't  worrying  about  Tyrrell,"  said  Charley; 
"  I  was  only  wondering  whether  you  ever  thought 
how  it  all  happened,  of  how " 

She  interrupted  as  of  old,  and  her  voice  was  full 
of  hate. 

"  Think  of  that  luck  of  Jim's.    His  wife  and  son, 


JIM  4II 

too  I  Some  people  have  all  the  luck.  But  his  won't 
last  forever— I'm  sure  of  that.  .  .  .  Almost  sure. 
.  .  .  Can't  you  come  'round  to  see  me  sometimes?  " 
she  was  asking.  "  I'm  not  so  good  to  look  at  as  I 
used  to  be:  I've  had  some  hard  luck  and  I'm  afraid 
I've  been  drinking  a  little  lately.  Still,  for  old  times' 
sake " 

She  now  meant,  it  was  evident,  only  what  she  said. 
Remarriage  between  paupers,  and  in  the  face  of  the 
forever  disapproving  Mame,  could  never  be. 

"Oh!"  Charley  caught  his  breath.  "I'd  like 
to;  but  if  Mame  ever  found  out " 

Edith's  voice  was  softer.  u  You  could  sneak 
around  once  in  a  while,  couldn't  you?  I'm  lonely." 

That  was  it,  he  knew:  she  did  not  love  him;  her 
very  passion  was  dead;  but  she  was  lonely  without 
the  one  man  left  in  the  world  with  whom  she  had 
something  in  common,  even  if  that  something  was 
only  the  memory  of  a  mutual  and  really  ineffectual 
conspiracy. 

"  I  don't  understand  why  you  should  be  lonely," 
he  nevertheless  said. 

"  You  wouldn't  understand,  Charley.  But  I've 
had  to  worry,  and  that  leaves  its  marks.  Can't  you 
come  'round?  Won't  you?"  It  was  not  like  the 
manner  of  the  former  Edith. 

"  If  Mame  found  out— 

"  She'd  stop  both  our  allowances.  Yes,  I  know. 
But  just  once  in  a  while,  Charley:  she'll  never  get 
to  know." 

Charley  gulped. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I'll  try." 

He  laughed,  they  both  laughed,  at  the  idea  of 


JIM 

tricking  Mame;  she  was  the  only  person  left  for 
them  to  trick. 

"  Do !  "  Edith's  voice  was  almost  happy  at  the 
prospect.  "  Do  try.  If  you  will  only  try,  you  can 
work  it.  Nobody  need  know." 

'  There  was  something  I  wanted  to  ask  you," 
said  Charley.  "  It  was  about  us — about  the  reason 

everything  went  wrong  between  us.  I "  He 

groped  in  his  poisoned  mind,  but  the  subtlety  had 
escaped  him.  "I  can't  think  of  it  now,"  he  said; 

"  but  when  we  have  our  talk Oh,  Edith  " — he 

had  heard  someone  at  the  front  door — "  here  comes 
Mame.  I've  got  to  ring  off  quick  1  " 

"Good-night!"  called  Edith. 

Charley  had  not  the  courage  to  respond  to  that 
farewell.  He  hung  up  the  receiver  just  in  time  to 
face  Mame  and  Zoller,  who,  as  was  now  his  custom, 
had  brought  her  home. 

"  I  thought  I  heard  you,"  said  Charley,  "  and  I 
thought  I'd  just  run  down " 

Mame  sniffed.  Standing  in  the  hall  beside  her 
grim  and  dry  fiance,  she  was  a  picture  of  vacuous 
self-satisfaction. 

"  Charley,"  she  said,  "  you've  been  drinking 
again." 

"  No,  I  haven't,  Mame,  indeed " 

"  Don't  lie  about  it,  Charley.  I'm  ashamed  of 
you.  And  Mr.  Zoller  here,  too !  You've  forgotten 
about  the  shutters — I  noticed  them  as  we  came  by — 
and  I  bet  you  forgot  the  back  door.  Go  to  bed." 

He  turned  meekly  and  went  upstairs,  and  there, 
from  his  own  room,  he  looked  out  at  the  stars  and 
the  warm,  inviting,  deceptive  Spring  night. 


JIM  413 

He  thought  of  Edith.  Of  course  they  could  never 
be  openly  together,  and  of  course  when  they  were 
secretly  together  they  would  often  hate  each  other, 

and  yet He  wondered  why  he  had  gone  to  the 

telephone.  Had  he  gone  only  because  he  had  seen 
that  paragraph  in  the  paper  about  Tyrrell?  No, 
he  knew  that,  had  there  been  but  the  mention  of  Tyr 
rell,  he  would  not  have  gone.  He  went  because  of 
that  mention  of  Jim;  and  that  was  why  Edith  had 
telephoned.  They  had  made  Jim  serve  their  turn, 
and,  because  of  their  triumph,  Jim,  by  merely  re 
maining  alive  and  doing  his  work  in  the  world,  had 
ruined  both  their  lives.  He  had  brought  them  to 
gether;  he  had  driven  them  apart;  he  had  taken  their 
youth,  their  hopes,  their  friends,  their  means  of  live 
lihood  ;  he  had  made  them  thieves  and  left  them  pen 
sioners;  and  now  it  was  Jim,  honored  and  successful, 
who  was  once  more  drawing  them  together  in  a 
frightful  and  furtive  companionship. 

§  6.  Downtown,  Edith  was  leaning  at  her  win 
dow.  The  faint  breeze  of  the  May  night  stirred  the 
curtains  of  her  brightly  lighted  room.  The  scent  of 
the  season  rose  above  the  heavy  odors  of  the  nar 
row  street  below.  It  floated  over  the  window-sill. 
Spring,  the  oldest,  the  sweetest,  and  the  subtlest  of 
liars,  was  at  the  ear  of  the  world  once  more.  It  was 
whispering  something.  .  .  . 

Edith  could  not  catch  the  words. 


THE   END 


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